Again, it would have rocked if I’d gotten Wil to write his own dialogue — IIRC, I sent this script to him via e-mail, but didn’t hear back, so I crossed my fingers that this would be something he’d be all right with.

One of the things that impressed me most about Wil’s blog was how he wears his heart on his sleeve — genuine enthusiasm about things he likes, genuine passion about the things he doesn’t like — and always a strong balance between being very open and free in talking about his family, and how much he loves them, without ever getting into that eyebrow-raising kinda-creepy “intimablogging” that crosses the Weird Line from time to time.

So we needed to establish a few things here; one is Wil’s rising celebrity star, which becomes important to the economic/social themes that arise later, but also what becomes John’s thesis on the “purpose” of the returners. It really starts here, and arguably this plants the seeds in John’s mind for what he says at the end of this issue. A less charitable read would have had John cribbing Wil’s ideas, which frankly never occured to me at the time but seems kind of strangely plausible now.

This, of all things, is why Wil was perfect for this “role.” I simply could not have done this with almost anybody else — most celebrities don’t share their feelings, lives, and interests as openly and nakedly as Wil Wheaton, and I would not have felt at all comfortable putting these sorts of emotions and ideas into play with an unvoluntary subject like the theorized Stephen Seagal. I could have come up with some fake celebrity, but that would have required more elaborate backstory and current-status explanations; I could have taken an unvoluntary actor with the same “vibe,” but it would have felt wrong and intrusive to put words in the mouth that somebody that doesn’t blog about their ideas and emotions on a routine basis.

I think Taylor is actually quoting a FARK poster from back when I was originally writing this script.