☉ Until Dawn ☉

Why didn't Sam just take the letter once they had all walked away? That instigates the whole prank right and she was there when they set it down. I get trying to talk them out of doing it, but she could have just taken the letter??

Beth's closest relationships in the original are (by order of highest to lowest) Hannah, Josh, Sam, Jess, and Chris. Ashley, Mike, Matt, and Emily are all at an equal level to one another. I find it kind of interesting that she is closer to Jess than Chris. Jess is the one who instigates the mean spirited prank on Hannah. Beth never knows that, but it's an interesting wrinkle.

There is an investigation going on a year after their disappearance and they do mention a man of interest in the case-which is an interesting foreshadowing to flame thrower guy. Josh likely knew about it. So, it added a little credibility to his "prank". The podcast Sam was listening to not only had the sheriff of Blackwood on it but featured Josh's note to his friends. It wouldn't have been a stretch for his friends to believe that someone would take advantage of their publicized return to the mountain to do something. The Wendigos were a fascinating angle, but I think it would have also been kind of interesting if there had actually been someone with a vendetta against the Washington family just plotting to "get even" or maybe even an obsessed fan of Mr. Washington's movies wanting to re-create some of his classics.

Sam's not really close with any of the main characters when you start playing initially. She is neutral towards everyone except Jess and Mike which is fair. Jess was the planner of the prank and Mike was the catalyst. Relationships are fluid and change over time. Since it has been a year since she's seen everyone, the fall in relationship levels could likely be explained by guilt and distance. The only one I don't really get is Josh. Her relationship with him, I would think, should be higher given that she says at the end that she thought they had a connection.

- Her massive crush on Mike isn’t baseless. She doesn’t just like Mike because of his face. Their friendship started because he needed tutoring in English. This was before he started dating Emily and before he became class president. He flirted with her shamelessly throughout their study sessions and it made her think that maybe he liked her like that. So, she started looking at him differently. She was crushed whenever he asked Emily to prom and not her. 

- Hannah never really got along well with Jessica or Emily. She felt like they were constantly trying to make her into something she wasn’t. Whenever they would try to get her to go shopping with them, they always ended up trying to get her to wear skirts and tight tops because it would show off her curves and tennis muscles. She only bought that form-fitting black button-up to shut them up; it was tucked in the back of her closet for months after she bought it--tags still on. 

- She is not an early riser. Waking her any time before the sun was well over the horizon guaranteed a grouchy Hannah that didn’t fully perk up until she had at least three cups of coffee. 

- Her favorite color is a purple. Second closest is a pale pink.

- Hannah met Sam in their freshman year. She didn’t think the clearly athletic blonde would bother talking to her. She was considered the quiet one--always drawing designs in her notebook and hardly speaking to those around her; but Sam took the only empty seat in the room--next to her--and complimented her drawing of a wolf with a butterfly on it’s nose and their friendship kicked off from that moment. Sam and Hannah were always talking in classes; at first, the teachers were surprised and just scolded them, but then it became such a problem that they moved the girls away from one another. 

- Sam and Hannah sit with the others in their friend group. She always tries to sit next to Mike, but after a while, she noticed that Sam would sit between them; Hannah knew it was her silent protest to Hannah’s enduring crush on Mike. 

They got into an argument once about it. Sam thought Mike would just trample over Hannah’s heart; “he isn’t the “forever” type of guy, Hannah.” Hannah really tried to take her best friend’s words to heart and put her crush behind her, but then Mike would do something for her or say something to her and all of her hard work would go out the window.  

- Ashley, Hannah, Chris, and Matt study together frequently. They all help one another in areas they are weak. Ashley and Hannah both needed help in math; Matt’s strong suit was math. Matt and Chris needed help in science--which was one of Ashley’s strong suits. 

- Hannah wrote religiously in journals. Frequently, she would make these matchmaking lists that changed school year to school year. She would make a list of all of the traits of her friends--detailing the good and the bad that she saw in them...and she would match them based on which friends she felt would click the best. Some pairings were the same. 

A common match in her journals was always Sam and Josh. She could see them working really well together. She could also see Beth and Sam because they would be good together too. In tiny writing, she admits that she could just want Sam to be an official member of their family instead of an honorary one; but she truly does think Sam would be good with either one of her siblings--if they would just make a damn move on her already. 

Another common match was her and Mike, but it was wishful thinking. It’s difficult for her to set aside her own feelings for him and imagine him with other friends in their group. After the first entry she made for him, she leaves Mike out of the match-making part of her journal all together. His description ran too long and made her realize just how colored her opinion of him was. She wouldn’t have been able to make an accurate match if she wanted him for herself. 

Chris and Ashley were always paired together. She could definitely see what her brother was talking about all the time. They were perfect for one another. 

Only a few pages of her journal were dedicated to the match-making side of things. The other half was just her day to day business: interesting things that happened at school, irritating things of note that her siblings did. ((They were just the ramblings of a teenage girl that seemed all the more interesting and valuable after Hannah and Beth disappeared; but at least Josh could still hear her in her journals. The real her, not the specters that haunted his nightmares.))

-  Hannah admires her sister for her strength and spine. She knows that Beth views herself as Hannah’s protector and she tries to protect her twin as well; but Beth doesn’t really need protecting. She still thanks Hannah whenever she stands up for her even if she isn’t as loud or as violent as Beth. 

- Hannah was more pacifistic than her twin; but she could be pushed to violence--always in the defense of others, never herself. Once, a boy at school was making fun of Beth to Hannah and made lewd jokes about twincest. She doesn’t quite remember what happened, but from what she understood Josh’s impressed ramblings, it took Mike, Chris, and Josh to pull Hannah off of him. She was suspended from school for a week; her friends brought her homework from each of the classes they shared. Her father paid off the pissed parents of the boy; and soon, it was all a memory. Hannah didn’t regret it, but she also wasn’t proud that she had let herself get so angry that she blacked out.