revamping an old story, "the test" [shoutout AATR6]

how the original came to be

i don't know how it began, but these past few months i've begun thinking a whole lot about old stories i wrote in my childhood, one in particular taking the spotlight in my mind. there exists a 14-page story i created in middle school for a creative writing assignment that i called, "the test," and it has retained inside-joke status in my friend group for years. no matter what godawful story you make, it will never be as bad as the test: that harem anime in prose form which ripped plotpoints directly from nisekoi, yandere simulator, and yume nikki, this story that i turned in for a grade btw 🥀

i hadn't read it in almost a decade and had a really warped perspective of it, treating it as an awful embarrassment; the first completed story of mine ever and also a stain on my future works. then one day, a friend and i randomly decided to sit down and read a bunch of our old stories, including the test, and to my utter astonishment, the takeway from this reading session was... THAT NOTHING IS EVER AS BAD AS U MAKE IT IN UR HEAD. my own friend's "the test" equivalent was NOT NEARLY as awful as they made it out to be, and MY "the test" was not nearly as bad to them. the actual "the test" was actually... so endearing and unintentionally funny??? the main character, malcolm is a COMPLETE MORON, awkward as SHIT, and the story which featured a gritty murder plot was so nonchalant and TONE DEAF, leading to quaint lines like THIS???

o-oh geez scoob... a dead body...

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTT.

also not murder-related but this line is kinda funny to me

(aka the stalker).

for a grade btw.

get him out of here he doesnt want to be in a harem

like it's so endearing. i thought i'd cringe into my skin reading it but all i felt was like.... genuine joy and warmth. these dorks of characters, this mess of a storyline... it had PASSION it had POTENTIAL. and potential is the keyword here.

so, the actual plot of the test goes as follows: there's infighting in the upper world and the gods are gearing up for civil war. one of the few demigods, malcolm, wants to help so bad but is deemed not strong enough and is cast to earth for his own safety by his mother who gives him a vague "test" w/o instructions that he has to complete in order to find his keep. but his time on earth is even more alienating as in the upperworld. he doesn't know his mission and all he wants to do is get back home and save the people he cares about. his final fight is against khemtes (aka the stalker) - a god who wants to escape her arranged marriage in the upperworld and latched onto malcolm as a way to fix it. she follows him to earth and fucks up his relationships, kills 5 people, and malcolm stops her, completing "the test." can we be so fr. it's a decent plot RIGHT. it's messy, weird, but DECENT. and now that i had healed my perception of this story, i had the intense and burning desire to revamp it. and i had a (albeit short-term) boost of motivation because...

AATR

AATR? OCT? what's AATR? well it was the kick-start to my revamping this story, but ultimately not necessary to understand its new plot. it is a major inspiration thou, so read about it in the collapsibles if you enjoy supplemental knowledge :]

meta OC tournament THREATENS poor unassuming artist to question their relationship with their OC

I PROMISE THIS IS RELEVANT I PROMISE. ok so there was an era of deviantart where OCTs (original character tournaments) were rly popular, its premise being a storytelling tournament where artists are pit against each other and make their OCs fight. whoever has the better comic/story/anim/whatever goes to the next round, and so on, creating a coherent storyline that still diverges into branches as the tournament goes on and participants get booted or move up. i didn't know it at the time, but AATR was a cultural staple in the OCT community and had multiple seasons over (i believe???) two decades. the idea of AATR is that YOU as the artist will be a character in your own comic alongside your character, and you two have to work together and fight other artists and their ocs. when i was around, i only knew of 2 seasons and for some reason thought s2 discontinued and they never picked it up again. tell me why not shortly after i began thinking about AATR again, the SIXTH SEASON WAS ANNOUNCED ON TWITTER DOT COM??????? SIXTH???????????? THERE WERE SIX OF THEM!??!?!??!?!??!??! count me in dude???????

my new fondness for the test had fused with my sudden interest in AATR and with a sudden clarity, i knew i wanted to revamp malcolm, who would have been the character i chose to fight with me. keyword is REVAMP. im fighting with a REVAMPED counterpart i am NAWT having MALCOLM from THE TEST with me, as funny as that would be.

the premise of AATR is really meta, there's a lot you can do when you write yourself and an OC together. out of all OCs, why out of all OCs did you bring them to life to fight with you? what does the OC think of their own story? will they even want to fight against other peoples' OCs? do THEY trust YOU? how will your relationship with your OC compare against other artists' relationships with their OCs? YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN? if you participate, a lot can be explored about your own relationship with your character, both in-character and metaphorically as an artist. which is why when i heard about AATR6 opening auditions, i IMMEDIATELY knew i wanted to pick malcolm, a character with history and whose story i JUST had a perspective pivot for, and whose future i was uncertain for. what IS my relationship with this character? especially if the revamped version is separate from the old, and the story itself is different. what would he think of his original story? what about me changing it? this was the perfect excuse i needed to get started on my "the test" revamp.

that being said, let's see when the deadline is!

oh my fucking god bruh

tell me why, when i JUST found out AATR was still kicking, THE DEADLINE FOR AUDITIONS WAS A MERE WEEK AWAY WITH 3 GRADE-DEFINING ASSIGNMENTS DUE ON THE SAME DAY. mmmmotherFUCKeRrr this ALWAYS happens with ANY cool OCT i wanna join - i always discover it on the CUSP of the deadline and cant make anything cool 😭😭😭 i was so sad i was actually so sad.

with the deadline a week away, i knew i reasonably couldn't bust out a comic that i was proud of. i managed to throw in a spectator entry which is like,... youre not in the official bracket but u can make comics if u want lol. i got busy afterwards and didn't manage to talk to anyone/get any unofficial comic fights going like i would have liked, but at least i got smthn in and gave me the motivation to even envision a "the test" retelling in the first place.

as a treat, here are some extra doodles of us two! also yeah these r spoilers for his redesign later down the page lol

anyhow, that's the end to all of my AATR ramble. once again, his OCT-related plot isn't canon to the revamp, however, much of his personality, design, that i came up with for AATR still carry over to the revamp. now i can dive into WHY these decisions were made in the ACTUAL storyline...

new name

atp my intent is NOT to "fix" the test, that'll never be my intent. i'm taking the premise and asking "what if i had made this story today?" it's not a better version, it's an alternate one personalized to the present day, just like how the original test was based on what i liked at the time! yknow, like nisekoi and yandere sim and... fml. anyhow, i want to honor the old test, not overwrite it, and to do this, i wanna keep the name "the test," but take small steps to distinguish the new from the old. change the MC's name and redesign the characters. at first, i used AATR as an excuse to do this, but was now time to start thinking about the revamp itself FR.

the first thing i did was change malcolm's name to something i believed would fit his new vibe and story role better. so yea, i chose the new name "maël" for his revamp counterpart. mildly regal-sounding and it literally means "prince," but also can be translated to "servant" or "devoted," which. is really juicy considering his storyline of chasing the upperworld :]

thought process of a redesign

i already showed off maël's design in the AATR collapsible a little bit but i wanna elaborate more on my design decisions here and also provide a better refsheet. the original the test surprisingly didn't give us a physical description of malcolm AT ALL. luckily, i remember vaguely what his original design looked like, because after the test was turned in, i reused his design for another character, peck, from another story in the works at the time. peck looks like this:

so we at least have a face to work with, although no outfit, so ig it's up to me. well for starters, he's a demigod, and i feel like a fun (albeit typical) way to depict a half-human is quite literally. like..... i could make him into a kemonomimi....... oh who do u think i am, ofc i'm making him a kemonomimi. his god mom was depicted as a bird in the original, so why can't we give his revamp bird features too?

as for what species of bird i based him off, i went with an aplomado falcon, hence the stripe below his eyes. this inspo is SOOO loose btw. any bird fanatics reading this... pls don't kill me i'm aware their feet are not black and their wings are patterned 🙏🙏🙏 this was done for simplicity & outfit coherency bcs i'd assumed i'd be making comics when i first redesigned him LOL. this is obviously not the case anymore and i DO want to tweak the fit a little, so anything goes from now on.

speaking of his new fit... why the outfit decisions? well, i envisioned an aloof but humble look for him. the collar, the bow, corset are kind of "cute" and proper, juxtaposed with the patched clothes, fingerless gloves, and face markings. i intended for him to seem scrappy yet still quaint and regal somehow. the long hair was a big factor of this, i knewwwww the moment i started this revamp that he would have long hair. what's with the antennae though? i actually took some inspo from the song series, qualia automata. in it, a character believed their antennae could pick up signals from the gods. and i thought that was SO COOL i just had to yoink that lil tidbit. in the test, a story about being outcasted from those very gods, i thought it'd be a nice ironic addition to god lore. you're born with the ability to constantly hear instructions from the gods but one day you're exiled can't hear them anymore. YIKES i love it. for the test revamp, i've decided that all gods will have the ability to communicate telepathically with each other, but with the demigods' physical form, this is represented by 2 antennae-like feathers sticking out their head.

ok fr what's with the corset? well we got. two possible explanations for that.

1. additional back support for those huge wings
2. i thought it would be cute

pick one or perhaps consider both

new themes and plot diversions

in the original plot, we KNOW what malcom's test is - malcolm's mother sent him to earth specifically to put him through a test of diplomacy. the test was completed when he solved the mystery behind the murders at his school and peacefully got the assailant, khemtes, to undo the damage she'd done. (literally, those guys came back to life.) malcolm wanted to FIGHT when he got news of impending civil war, but his mom's lesson onto him was that peaceful diplomacy was equally as valuable. malcolm didn't know that defeating khemtes was specifically his task, but it was assumed that malcolm's omnipotent god mother had planned all of this for him and was guiding him down that path the whole time. however... that's a bit cruel, isn't it? you put him on earth where he's never lived before, tell him he has a mission, gives him no instructions, and then stop talking to him at all until he's done the task? all while you know he's desperate to help quell the danger at home? that's your son, not a random mortal, can you really play with his life and emotions THAT much? that's something about the original test that i found SUPER unnerving but super interesting: the disconnect between how gods think and mortals think. because malcolm was never in any real danger, but he's part HUMAN, he doesn't KNOW that. how can he not still feel betrayed from this? even the original the test acknowledges this thinking gap to some extent.

you can perform godhood imperfectly?? "imperfect" - how do you reach that standard of perfection if something about you is just so inherently antithetical to it?

like his mom is able to KNOW malcolm would succeed, but remember that malcolm himself is COMPLETELY in the dark. it's rly unrealistic to put 100% blind trust in the safety and validity of this "test" when he has no metrics for it.

so, how did malcolm react to his circumstances in the original story? ....it was more like he didn't react at all. he gets acclimated to earth life so flawlessly, if not with the occasional awkward quirkiness. the ticking timebomb that is the civil war doesn't bother him much, he just... goes to school and reacts to the news of the murders with nonchalance until the plot needs him to solve them. this is mostly a side-effect of the original the test's genre being a harem with comedic elements, so yeah, the story's not gonna focus on the existentialism much. but i feel like in the revamped version, i want to explore this godliness vs humanness idea WAYY more. maël and malcolm are both demigods after all. what happens when the complete calm omnipotence of godhood is forced to exist in the same body with the ever-complicated aspects of humanity? we already know how the gods feel about it, so what about him? it's such a unique hook, "a mission with no instruction or clear end," told by a demigod metaphorically wanting to reach to full godhood while among the human world. i wanna do MORE with it! ...and keep the harem. YEAH IM GONNA KEEP THE HAREM. anyhow, the most crucial changes i will make go as follows:

wheras in the original, malcolm's mother is trustworthy and honest with her intentions for the test, in the revamp, there is a huge possibility that his mother's test has no end. there is a possibility that, instead of telling him outright that the uppperworld doesn't want him, they choose to lighten the blow with "the test" to indirectly get him out of their hair. to give him hope there is a chance he belongs, when the decision had already been made long ago. i can't believe this was not a concern in the original, i can't believe that malcolm does not once wonder if his mom abandoned him for good. i'm emphasizing the looming possibility that there is no answer to the test - we still don't know whether this is REALLY the case, it just haunts maël's thoughts a ton. i'm keeping the final message of the original the same: diplomacy, and enhancing it with the godly vs humanly theme.

"imperfect" - how do you reach that standard of perfection if something about you is just so inherently antithetical to it? - you don't. malcolm's unique strength was found in his humanity, in his peacekeeping. the same is for maël. the standard of perfection is something for the gods, and as much as he wants to be one, he isn't, not fully. and although maël is a much more patient character than malcolm, i'm also keeping his original eagerness to fight and fixation on vague "strength" as a part of his character struggle.

related to the previous point, i also want to give this god vs mortal dichotomy some physicality to it. it's a relevant piece of worldbuilding but i'm kinda iffy on its role in the story atm so i'm putting it in a collapsible instead. optional read 🤷

physicality

for the revamp, i've chosen to depict full-gods as big balls of light - pure energy, no physical. so maël, being a demigod, has to literally balance these aspects of himself in his physical form as well as mentally. this isn't just for maël but is a given for any demigod.

Maël doesn't bleed or have any internal organs, instead, his human body is a "shell" for what contains his divinity. If his human shell is damaged, what exists of his godly form spills through. This form: an overpowering, formless ball of energy. His human shell, his tether to any sentience or humanity, cannot heal. His wounds can be concealed with clothing or bandages, but never close.

This clash between physical and non-sentient energy would not exist for other gods, but because Maël is a demigod, he struggles with this balance. In the heavens, this perceived weakness is why he wasn't allowed to fight.

- AATR6 Maël reference sheet

he can technically discard his humanity altogether by "killing" the human shell, but there's also the fact that they're not two separate entities but two forms with one mind - if one's discarded, how much of him is left? both sides HAVE to be balanced and contended with.

additionally, this tidbit also serves as explanation to how he can summon cool weapons. it's a must for every OC i make lol.

so tldr; overly complicated blood-bending.

for AATR specifically, this was done to nerf him so that we couldn't get into fights with no consequence. but in the actual revamp, it serves as a nice visual and physical embodiment for the duality of "master the godly, protect the humanly." this specific balance struggle is actually why demigods are looked down upon, and is the "weakness" that led maël to be exiled when he asked to fight. it also lets us take a peek at HOW the gods would normally fight and the loopholes that demigods have to go through to even match their natural prowess. like, gods don't literally have to cut themselves open to let the power out, they ARE the power, they can shape themselves however they like EASY.

i think that's all i have to say about new story themes. while we're here, i might as well say that i'm aging up the revamp's cast. 20 y/o at the YOUNGEST. i feel like a lot of these questions about abandonment, balancing yourself, and your place in the world hit harder if the characters are young adults and at the age you're on your own for the first time. the original highschool location has potential, but i'm less interested in exploring it. actually, while thinking of new settings, i became really attached to the idea of a community theatre. since maël can't hide his wings or talons, it'd be way easier for him to blend into a place where everyone's in costume. i think it's a super fun setpiece, and also creates a much more compelling reason for the cast to know each other, that being the fact most of the revamped side-characters are stagehands. speaking of other characters... before we move onto them, lemme get this outta the way:

clarifications on maël's personality

i realized that through all of this discussion, i talk a lot about maël's circumstances but i never got a space to talk about his actual personality haha. so before i elaborate on the other characters, i wanna make sure we know maël clearly. here's some bullet points abt him to make this brief:

cast introductions and their roles in the story

OK REMEMBER WHEN I SAID I'D KEEP THE HAREM? YEAH.

while i believe the harem was the least interesting thing about the test, i do have a soft spot for the character dynamics that can come out of it, no matter how ridiculous the concept is to me. so i present to you, the secondary characters of the test. and all of them have a place in the harem, whether it be as a serious love interest or as random one-off gags. specifically christi is a red herring lol

unlike malcolm whose appearance was actually never described, his secondary cast actually DID have physical descriptions in the original text, so i have something to work with. their chara descriptions are also very job/theatre-focused in opposed to personality-focused. this is to explain more of the setting and how they fit in it.

brief character summaries

i tried to keep their personalities pretty similar to the originals, except for khemtes, who was never a boisterous character but a silent schemer who gave people the creeps. i don't really like that archetype paired with her role in the story thou. so, to both better contrast maël and to give myself a more fun time, i changed her personality to the type of schemer i'd have a blast writing in the present day. that is, a cocky loudmouth who lets people underestimate her.

khemtes rant and further story diversions

speaking of khemtes. as far as revamp changes go... listen... listennnnn....... i love it when a character gets a little unhinged. but khemtes isn't going to kill anyone this time. IM SORRY IM SORRYYY. her reason for killing those 5 people was interesting, it's just that it was not taken seriously at all, so much so that i don't even know how i could rewrite it today with gravity. basically, the killings were a sacrificial offering to a god in a hierarchy above her to ensure she gets married to malcolm and NOT her arranged marriage back in the upperworld. similarly to malcolm, her own fate had been taken out of her hands by people above her, and unlike malcolm whose arc was learning to choose peace, she chose to try and sway fate through manipulation and violence. the people she killed were specific targets - mortals at the school who were close to him. but considering i was twelve when i wrote allthat, you can imagine how this parallel between them was nOT MADE CLEAR AT ALL. hence i am REACHING with these parallels because this murder plot actually depicted her dilemma pretty one-dimensionally, where in the present day, i see infinite potential in how khemtes and maël could oppose each other thematically that was (understandably for the genre) just not there originally. hence why i made khemtes into a deuteragonist in this revamp instead of just a simple side-character turned twist villain. i want her to share the space with him instead of just being someone who's in his way.

but here comes the tricky part. khemtes was a yandere, but if we take out her murders in the revamp, then what IS she? those murders were the climax of the original story. does she even have the same oomph if she doesn't kill anyone? YES. HARD STOP. i'll rearrange a few parts of her dilemma while keeping it as close to the OG as possible, and i'll do this via ONE simple change. she still wants to escape her arranged marriage and the 5 murders DO happen, except now khemtes has been framed, the arranged marriage thing being the assumed motive. but she didn't do it.

changes to her story:

1. i think that having her be framed allows us to explore worldbuilding/peoples' perception of her without having to commit to her also being a full-out antagonist. mostly, do others easily believe that she's capable of murder? how do the views of earthlings and gods compare? khemtes has spent her whole life committing to the ideals of godhood to the point the full-gods fear her strength. but she wanted connection, not fear. and after all of this perfecting of herself, she's been repaid with more fear. getting framed for a heinous crime by someone who... what DID the killer want to do? did someone want her out of the upperworld and is trying to make her look bad so she'll be exiled next? or was it the opposite - did they wanna ruin her relations with the mortals so she'll forever have to stay in the upperworld? or were they trying to get maël's attention instead? is the theatre safe or is it perhaps the next target? who is this person and what do they want with them all?? so many good questions which put ALL of the cast into the wringer if khemtes isn't the killer.
2. the reason for her obsession - if she and maël are the only two demigods in the world, then her fixation on him makes WAY more sense doesn't it. maybe because of this loneliness, they were adamant that they stuck together in childhood and this was like... a big important promise between the two of them but it's not really as potent now that they're both grown up? dude it's gone back full circle to being nisekoi again get me out of here. khemtes initially wasn't even a demigod in the original btw, she was a full-god.

ok but... if the murders were the climax of the original story, and khemtes didn't do it. then,

then what IS the climax?

THE STORY'S SO VERY RECENT. I DON'T HAVE ANY IDEA I'M NGL 💀💀💀 LET ME FIGURE IT OUT AND I'LL GET BACK TO U. i KNOWWW that's so anti-climactic but I DUNNO WHAT TO TELL U I HAVEN'T GOTTEN THAT FAR.

i have lingering ideas for the killer's identity, including a full-god who obsesses over humanity to contrast with khemtes' worldview and to also feed maël new ideas abt himself. yk, the further down this page we get, the less of what i say is set in stone. speaking of...

the end

sometimes i think abt what the teacher must have thought of the original the test but i'm so ngl he probably didn't even read allthat. the maximum page count was 6 and i turned in 14 NOBODY'S READING ALLTHAT. just like how nobody's reading allTHIS. ARE U STILL HERE MAN ?? HI LOL !!! the test and its revamp counterpart have taken over my brain these past few months, and while this blogpost was just for me to release the pent-up oc brainrot energy, i'm happy that my long-winded ramble has the chance for extra eyes. esp since it's about something i adore. i will for sure be developing this story further, although not as a full-blown story/comic/whatever, there will definitely be a world and lore. my lovely sandbox. aghk, well that's all. enjoy these misc doodles as the encore!