Characters / Murder at Homecoming

Character sheet for the Visual Novel Murder at Homecoming, a story in Choices: Stories You Play.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead.

Main Cast (main character and love interests)

A team of students at Beachwood High who band together to investigate the death of Gabbie Navarro after the police refuse to take it seriously.

Blake (Main Character)

The protagonist of this story, a private detective.

• Kid Detective: Blake is a high school student and has been investigating mysteries at a young age before investigating Gabbie's murder.
• Middle Name Basis: "Blake" is actually the protagonist's default middle name, which they go by. Their full name is Valentine "Blake" Stone.
• Private Detective

Donovan Navarro

The twin brother of the murder victim of this case.

• Defrosting Ice King: He's extremely standoffish to others in the earlier parts of the book, but warms up to them overtime. Justified with all the trauma he's gone through and the (decontextualized) things he's heard about Tyler, whom he is most hostile to at first.

Stevie Sun

An old friend of Blake's and Gabbie's who joins the main group.

• Alliterative Name: Stevie Sun.
• Minor with Fake I.D.: She runs a fake ID business.

Tyler Woods

Gabbie's boyfriend and track team star.

• Fake Relationship: It's revealed that Gabbie pretended to be in a relationship with him, as a cover for her genuine relationship with Joanna. Tyler himself was unwise to this, but agreed out of gratitude towards Gabbie for how she helped him in the past.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Tyler is very quick to anger and tends to become physically violent when he feels threatened.
• Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: Tyler's initially subject to suspicion when early in the book, Blake snoops on his phone and sees a message implying he held violent rage towards Gabbie. The innocent context of the message exchange is revealed later.

Joanna Morgan

An old friend of Gabbie's.

• Closet Gay: Highly justified as her parents are extremely homophobic, having attempted to send her to what was in essence legal conversion therapy.
• Secret Relationship: What she was in with Gabbie. The secrecy was more for her sake than Gabbie's, because while Beachwood as a whole isn't very homophobic, her family definitely was.

Other Characters

Gabbie Navarro

The victim of this story, the discovery of her drowned and drugged corpse during Homecoming kicks the events of this story into motion.

• Fake Relationship / Secret Relationship: She was in a fake relationship with Tyler as a cover for her secret relationship with Joanna.
• Minor with Fake I.D.: She was involved with Stevie's fake ID business.

Brett Morris

A troublemaker around school who has an old feud with Gabbie.

• Hate Sink: He's a notorious bully in Beachwood High who, among other things, attempted to rape Stevie while she was a freshman and he was a sophomore.
• Jerkass
• Red Herring: Over the course of the investigation, the team keeps coming back to him, and they didn't immediately trust his alibi that he was in jail at the time of the murder. It is only in Chapter 15 that the team realizes that the killer is actually his sister April.

April Morris

Brett's significantly better-adjusted younger sister.

• Accidental Murder: She didn't mean to kill Gabbie and only drugged her with the intent of manipulating her into embarrassing herself. Subverted in that she refused to help her out of the pool as she drowned, which she acknowledges to not be much better.
• Big Bad: As the one who murdered Gabbie and instigates the final conflict during the night of Winter Formal, she is the main antagonist of this book.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She initially comes off as the Nice Girl to her jerkass brother, but in Chapter 15, she is revealed to not only be Gabbie's killer, but she did it as payback for Brett's imprisonment, which shows that she's actually as bad as her brother.
• Revenge Myopia: The reason she killed Gabbie was because the latter got Brett imprisoned for crimes he committed.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: She initially comes off as the good girl to Brett's bad boy. Subverted when she's revealed to be Gabbie's killer.
• Walking Spoiler: The many spoiler tags here aren't for nothing.

Joshua Lewis

Beachwood High's popular and beloved chemistry teacher.

• Cool Teacher: He's quite popular and liked at the school, and with how kind and accommodating to students he's mentioned to be, it's easy to see why.
• Closet Gay: He's secretly gay, to the disapproval of his parents. Likely why he was willing to help Joanna and Gabbie with their relationship, having a clue how much strife Joanna's homophobic family would've caused her.
• Hot Teacher: He's also seen as quite attractive by some of his students.
• Nice Guy: In general, but this is also proven quite strongly towards the end of the book when he holds no animosity towards the main characters for nearly ruining his life by getting him arrested on a false accusation of sexual assault, and returns to teaching to Beachwood high in spite of the damage done to his name.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Evidence arises indicating that he was in a romantic relationship with Gabbie. Averted when the evidence turns out to all be a misunderstanding.

Jeremy Walters

A coach at Beachwood High and also a former boyfriend of Perdita, Blake's missing sister.

• Taking Up the Mantle: In the final scene, it is revealed that he attempted to follow through on Perdita's investigations by reading her diary, but failed to make any progress. He gives Blake the diary before leaving.

Claudia Rhodes

Gabbie's best friend.

• The Chains of Commanding: Struggles with this because she feels that people have promoted her to being the queen bee, a position she never wanted and feels inadequate stepping into Gabbie’s shoes. Blake is able to point out people look to her for leadership because of their own grief and she’s actually doing a good job.

Millie Pereira

The school mascot and an old friend of Blake.

Toby Meyer

Head of the AV club and the subject of Millie's crush.

Perdita Stone

The older sister of Blake who disappeared years ago.

• Aborted Arc: Presumably due to the sequel being canceled, neither we nor Blake ever learn what happeend to her.
• Legally Dead: Despite the lack of a body, the Stone family eventually held a funeral for her and erected a gravestone dedicated to her.
• Meaningful Name: Her name means "loss" in Italian, and she has been missing for four years.
• Never Found the Body: She went missing four years ago and was presumed dead by everyone except Blake, who believes she could still be alive.

Dr. Morgan

The father of Joanna Morgan.

• Cure Your Gays: What he sent Joanna to.
• Dr. Jerk: What else would you call a homophobic doctor who kicks his daughter out of home for being gay?
• Everyone Has Standards: Sure, he’s a homophobic, hypocritical prick, but he wouldn’t resort to murder.
• Happy Marriage Charade: Joanna's parents set up an image of a Happily Married couple in public, but they often argue in private. Indeed, Dr. Morgan has been cheating on his wife with a teacher.
• Hate Sink: He's a homophobic jerkass who secretly cheats on his wife while trying to maintain the image of a perfect, happy family.
• Hypocrite: All his talk of family values is rendered hypocritical when he's caught cheating on his wife with a school staff member inside the school.
• Red Herring: He has no involvement in Gabbie's murder despite a significant amount of evidence suggesting as much, including him being in the privileged position of having access to the drug found in Gabbie's system.