STF/Main

*Smoking The Filter*

Author
Todd Dawson-Cooper

Universe
D-242

Country
Canada

Genre(s)
Drama
Black Comedy
Mystery

Publisher
TBA

Publication date
TBA

ISBN
N/A

Preceded by
N/A

Followed by
N/A

***Smoking The Filter*** is an upcoming psychological slacker-thriller visual novel. The series focuses on a motley crew of recently-graduated young adults living in Olympia, Washington and deals the strange events that occur there in 1995, one year following a unresolved murder.

Although set in *The Placebo Effect* shared universe, *Smoking The Filter* takes place twenty years prior to the events of *Blank Earth* and as such, features very sparse connections. The game is built on the Ren'Py engine and is written, scripted and illustrated by Todd Dawson-Cooper.

## Description

Set in 1995 against the backdrop of the rainy Cascadian town of Olympia, Washington; *Smoking The Filter* follows the routine misadventures of nineteen-year-old high school dropout Cameron Parker: an outcast, vandal, and burnout. Cameron navigates the world of minimum wage jobs, crushing social expectations, and turbulent romantic relationships while struggling to find a grasp on her own identity.

In the background of this slice-of-life slacker tale, lay the ominous mystery regarding the circumstances of death for one Trevor Hawley, the local football champion and a classmate of Cameron’s that nobody particularly liked, which, unfortunately means everyone is suspect. When Cameron begins to surmise she may be the next to die, the choices she must make threaten to change the world she has come to know forever.

## Gameplay

*Smoking The Filter* is a "sound novel", a variation of visual novel with a focus on sound and atmosphere. Gameplay is typically restricted to reading individual scenes, during which narration and characters are displayed through a traditional text and sprite-based visual novel model with an ADV-style text box. The gameplay of *Smoking The Filter* is choice-based, in which the player reads through text and occasionally has the chance to respond to prompts with a variety of preset responses. The decisions made initiate possible events or dialogue within the story. Depending on the choices made by the player, the story branches into multiple forks.

## Development

Development on *Smoking The Filter* began in mid-2017 with a series of rough design sketches and personality outlines of lead protagonist Cameron Parker. For several years, Cooper had intended to utilize the unnamed character as a protagonist outside of the paperback medium, but had issues finding a suitable use for her. Cooper would explore various concepts of a comic series, an audio drama, and a web series even flirting with the potential of allowing public usage of the character. Cooper cited the popularity of independent fan-driven web media in the 2010s such as *Homestuck, Lore Olympus, Hazbin Hotel,* and *Welcome to Night Vale* as motivation to produce his own series.

In January of 2021, Cooper combined this ambition with several other ideas that had yet to fully manifest (such as rough concepts for a psychological "new weird"-inspired thriller, a whodunnit murder-mystery, an outline for a point-and-click beat-em-up adventure game and a television series heavily influenced by slacker films of the era) including plans for a visual novel. Although each of these concepts initially came across as incompatible, Cooper nonetheless began penning an outline for the series.

## Influences and Themes

Smoking The Filter was influenced (to various extents) by numerous existing works and pop culture including *True Detective, Silent Hill 2, Fargo, Twin Peaks, Gummo, When The Cicadas Cry, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Clerks, Stranger Things, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Omori, Broadchurch, Reality Bites, High Fidelity, River's Edge, My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, Daria, Party of Five, Slacker, Get Out, Katawa Shoujo, The Big Lebowski, The Killing, The Lighthouse,* and *Disco Elysium.*

## Appearances

### Characters

* Cameron Parker
* Avery Hamilton
* Damien Hernández
* Trevor Hawley
* Brett Lockwood
* Ivan Aldenson
* *View Complete List*

### Locations

* Olympia, Washington
	+ Parker Residence
	+ Hamilton Residence
	+ [[