pretzel

Okay so short and sweet description of what the Outlast trials is:

It’s set in 1959, at the peak of Cold War anxieties. Shady American corporation (Murkoff) takes in (lowkey kidnaps) volunteers for their Sleeper Agent project. The corporation purposely takes people who are lonely, homeless, poor or part of a marginalized group. These “volunteers”, called Reagents, are taken to the Sinyala facility where they’re fed, clothed and housed, but also forced to perform “trials”, each ending with the ridiculously gory execution of a Murkoff enemy. Reagents are promised that they’ll be released after a certain number of trials completed. But of course, this means the reagent comes back to the real world brainwashed and turned into a weapon for the US government.

The trials are all set in a specific location (heavily decorated warehouse lol), themed around a Prime Asset. A Prime Asset is basically a “big bad guy”, usually a violent and charismatic individual with a very specific aesthetic and brand. Each Prime Asset represents an archetype of the nuclear family, creating some strange dynamic of authority and stability. While they’re also prisoners inside the facility, their main purpose is to kill the reagents. Thanks to their insane dialogue, we get to have some insight on the traumatic backstories that colour their very unique personalities.

This game isn’t for everyone lol, it can get pretty gross and satirizes certain topics in a crude but intentional way, which could be offensive for some.

But my basic concept for my Les Mis AU is this:

Grantaire has been purposely delaying his release from Sinyala, having kept a steady contraband business with the help of Doris, the Shadowy Dame. He doesn’t have many friends, but he’s close with Joly (a medical college dropout who was sent in to cure his undiagnosed OCD), Eponine (a Boarding School escapee who was tricked into joining and is now looking for her lost brother) and Jean Prouvaire (a survivor of the Korean War who moved to the US in the hopes of finding their “GI” child, only to be tricked into “finding a job” at Sinyala). Each character has been failed by the US government in some way, signaling the cycle of “purposefully creating victims so they can be compelled into horrible situations out of desperation”.

Anyway, Grantaire’s routine is disrupted when a new Reagent with a fiery spirit comes in and stirs up trouble. Enjolras is a civil rights activist who gets kidnapped by Murkoff so he can be disappeared without wasting his special “talents”. At Sinyala, he befriends a few Reagents (Joly, Eponine, Combeferre, Prouvaire and Grantaire of course) and starts planning a great escape for all. Easterman, who leads Sinyala’s operations, takes a special interest in Enjolras and believes he could twist this escape situation to his advantage. His grand plan: building Enjolras into an icon of salvation for Reagents only for him to be broken and manipulated into becoming a new Prime Asset, therefore absolving any Reagent of hope and trust that they have in each other.

So the story is just about Grantaire’s growing optimism for humanity and faith in himself, contrasted by Enjolras’ struggle as he becomes a symbol and loses his humanity through pain and loneliness. At the beginning, both men start off disagreeing and bickering about everything, but they eventually find common ground and become important pillars in each other’s journey. Will Grantaire actually want to escape, or will he stay in the comfortable hole he built for himself? Will Enjolras break under the pressure and become a Prime Asset or will he successfully lead the others to freedom? Who knooooows!