Draft:Lacey Games Franchise

YaniAso Games - YaniAso Games is a fictional independent video game company that is responsible for developing and publishing all of the games featured on the Lacey Games website. It was founded some time in 2004 by Grace Asop and Rocío Yani. The company's name is noticeably a portmanteau of its founders' respective surnames. Grace Asop - Grace Asop is one of the cofounders of YaniAso Games, and a former friend of the company's other co-founder, Rocío Yani. Grace supposedly helped Rocío develop the games on their website, but claims that she was not privy to any of the site's disturbing content. Grace also adamantly denies that she has any affiliation with Lacey Games, and appears to harbor some resentment towards Rocío for unknown reasons. Rocío Yani - Rocío Yani is the other cofounder of YaniAso Games, and a former friend of the aforementioned Grace Asop. Rocío appeared to have been far more invested in the development of Lacey Games than her cofounder, and is heavily implied to be the one responsible for implementing all of the dark and disturbing content found on the website. Rocío plays an integral role in the overarching narrative of the series, despite having yet to physically appear in it, and there are numerous theories surrounding her current status and motivation behind her actions. Puddles - In Lacey's Petshop, it is revealed that when Lacey was younger, she owned a pet dog named "Puddles" that she was very fond of. Unfortunately, Puddles ended up being murdered by Lacey's uncle, possibly for biting him (although some theorize that it was due to Puddles urinating all over the house). Lacey was so distraught by the unjust killing of her beloved pet, that she murdered her uncle and stuffed his corpse under her bed. Secret ending - Lacey's Diner contains a secret ending that can be unlocked if the player fails to complete a single dish. In this ending, Lacey grows extremely frustrated at her customers' inability to wait longer than three minutes for their food, because their lack of business is causing her financial problems. As a form of revenge, Lacey poisons her customers with an inedible monstrosity, resulting in her diner being condemned for "sanitary violations." Having lost her only source of income, Lacey takes her own life, thus achieving the "bad ending." charchar887 - "charchar887" is the online alias of a girl named Charlie, who is a recurring character in the Lacey Games web series. Charlie was one of the many children who played on Lacey Games back in the 2000s when the site was active, and years later, she is investigating the site's disturbing content and reporting her findings on her YouTube channel. Working alongside Charlie is one of the site's cofounders, Grace, who has provided information about the site's history and its other cofounder, Rocío. Star Girl - An earlier version of the main page on the Lacey Games website featured a PNG image of Lacey wearing a shirt that says "Star Girl" on it. The significance of this term is unknown, though it could be in reference to Lacey being the site's titular mascot. Jay and Maisie - Lacey has two friends named Jay and Maisie who accompany her in some of her games, and act as secondary mascots for the Lacey Games website. Jay is described as a tomboy who likes skateboarding and rock music, while Maisie is described as smart and having an interest in astrology, astronomy, and reading horoscopes. All three girls are in a band called "Lacey and the Jammers." The stalker - Throughout Lacey's Wardrobe, Lacey is pursued by an unnamed stalker who is in love with her to the point of obsession. He will follow Lacey around, send her unwanted texts and phone calls, and even show up to her house uninvited. At the end of the game, the stalker mutilates Lacey and cannibalizes her remains, so that they can be, in his own words, "together forever." Lacey's uncle - In Lacey's Diner, it is revealed that Lacey grew up living with her paternal uncle, who is depicted as being a smoker, a porn addict, a drug addict, and an acholic. He is heavily implied to have abused Lacey in various ways, including burning her with cigarettes, attacking her with beer bottles, and even sexually abusing her. He is further explored in Lacey's Pet shop, where it is revealed that his niece murdered him for killing her pet dog. "what have you done" - In Lacey's Wardrobe, forcing Lacey to go outside against her wishes will result in "what have you done" being displayed in the top right corner of the screen. It's possible that these words are being uttered by Lacey herself, in reference to the player's actions. Running out of time in Lacey's Diner - If the player takes too long to complete a dish in Lacey's Diner, the screen will begin to distort as the timer counts down the remaining seconds. Failing to complete a dish within three minutes will result in Lacey's customers leaving to eat somewhere else, thus failing the level. Video essays/commentaries - Lacey Games has been the focus of many different video essays and commentaries on YouTube. Notable YouTubers who've covered the series include Bijuu Mike, Forever Nenaa, Gearisko, LaurenZside, minaxa, Pastra, shooshiMooshi, etc. laceygames.com.neocities.org- I created a website using Neocities that would pose as the real Lacey Games website that appears in the series. This site was accessible to anyone, and would occasionally be updated as needed. The site was taken down in early April 2024 for unknown reasons, though some suspect that i only needed for the third and fourth episodes, thus making it obsolete. TikTok - Lacey Games has become relatively popular on TikTok, especially among artists, animators, and cosplayers. Animation memes - Several animations memes have been made about Lacey Games, and are particularly popular on TikTok and YouTube. IRL locations - Some of the games featured in the Lacey Games web series utilize real-life backgrounds. Voice actors/actresses - In total, four people have provided voicework for the Lacey Games web series. The voices of Lacey and Jay were provided by me, myself, who also portrays Rocío. The stalker's voice was provided by Twitter user, aira riri, and Grace's voice was provided by Spidey. Charlie is both voiced and portrayed by Instagram user, chiara._arte.

Tier 2 The interviews - The third and fourth episodes of the series feature Charlie interviewing one of Lacey Games' co-founders, Grace, who talks about her experience with Lacey Games. In the first interview, Grace talks about how she kept receiving complaints from parents about the site's disturbing content, which she apparently wasn't even aware of until a parent forced her to play Lacey's Pet shop, and afterward, realized that the site's other cofounder, Rocío, was hiding things from her. In the second interview, Grace talks more about Rocío and how erratic her behavior was, whilst bringing up incidents of why she perceived her this way. 🚧 lacey road 🚧 - A Discord server for discussion of Lacey Games, as well as my other projects, can be accessed freely through the Lacey Games subreddit. Moms' concerns over Jay - There are multiple split-second frames in the fourth episode that reveal forum posts of parents expressing disapproval in Jay, one of the site's mascots. In these posts, Jay was criticized for her tomboyish demeanor, which was deemed inappropriate for a site aimed at young girls. Jay is also notably referred to in these posts with homophobic and transphobic slurs, such as "dyke" and "boygirl." This lead to a movement being started by parents on Facebook to have Jay removed from the site, out of fear of the influence she had on their daughters. Jay's removal/death - As a result of the aforementioned parental complaints, Rocío had Jay permanently killed off in a game titled "Jay's Skating Game," that ends with Jay skateboarding off a series of buildings into a sea of spikes. Shortly after this game was released, all games featuring the character were removed from the main page, as was Jay's bio pic on the "about us" page. However, Rocío would subsequently have Jay's corpse appear in other games on the site, with a notable example being "Lacey's Makeup Parlour." According to Grace, this incident resulted in a mass number of children being traumatized, with Charlie possibly being one of them, only having forgotten the incident due to trauma repression. Lacey's family - Outside of her uncle, Lacey has no known family members. Some fans have theorized a group of humanoid pigs that appear in Lacey's Petshop could serve as a representation of her family, which would indicate that they were every bit as cruel to her as her uncle was. Lacey's age - During their 50K subscriber special Q&A, i confirmed Lacey's age to be 19. Makeship plushie - With the release of the fourth episode, i promoted a Makeship petition for an official Lacey plushie. Within 24 hours, the petition surpassed its goal of 200 supporters, and as of now, 3,555 Lacey plushies have been sold, and are scheduled to be shipped on October 4, 2024. Behind the scenes - i have created two "behind the scenes" videos that showcase the development of the third and fourth episodes of Lacey Games respectively. Both of these videos were initially Patreon exclusive content prior to being uploaded publicly on my YouTube channel. My other projects - Other web series that i hav created outside of Lacey Games include "Imigrantes Road" and "Bug Murders," both of which currently contain two episodes, and can be watched on my YouTube channel. They are also the creator of "Boo! The Ghosts Away," which is a web comic series hosted on Tapas. Lacey is not an ARG - A common misconception online is that Lacey Games is an ARG (alternate reality game). Although the series does contain some ARG-inspired elements, it is not an interactive piece of media, and therefore does not qualify as an ARG. April 1 website change - On the eve of April 1, 2024, the Neocities website had been updated with five new games being featured on the main page. However, all games featuring Jay were inexplicably removed, as was Jay's bio pic on the "about us" page. Given the timing of when this occurred, fans initially assumed it was an April Fool's Day prank, but after several days had passed with Jay remaining absent, fans suspected that this change had something to do with the upcoming fourth episode of Lacey Games. These speculations would turn out to be valid, as Jay's absence was indeed relevant to the new episode. [censored for public health concerns] - In the secret ending of Lacey's Diner, Lacey's final dish is so grotesque, that it must be "censored for public health concerns." Lacey needs therapy - A common sentiment among Lacey Games fans is that Lacey should receive therapy for her many traumas. a goodbye song - Towards the end of the fourth episode, Lacey performs a song that she wrote in dedication to Jay following her death. The lyrics of the song indicate that Jay's death has left an incredibly deep impact on Lacey, with lyrics such as "The day after you were gone, I wished for all beauty to die. I wished the sky was tinted red, just like what i felt inside." Maisie and Jay games - Maisie and Jay star in their own games that center around them as opposed to Lacey. Maisie-centered games include "Maisie's Horoscope" and "Maisie's First Day of School," while Jay-centered games include "Jay's Hiphop Class" and "Jay's Skating Game." r/LaceyGamesSeries - r/LaceyGamesSeries is a Reddit community dedicated to discussing and posting content related to Lacey Games. It currently has over 1.7K members, and is ranked in the top 16% of all Reddit communities. YaniAso's closure - According to the Lacey Games website, YaniAso Games went defunct some time in 2010. This correlates to Grace's claim in the third episode that she and Rocío ceased contact with each other some time in 2010. The cause of the company's closure is unknown, but some fans theorize that the incident involving Jay may be related, due to it occurring the year before. Lacey-inspired works/lost Flash games - The popularity of Lacey Games has lead to a trend on YouTube centering around supposedly lost Flash games, many of which take heavy inspiration from the Lacey Games web series, both visually and thematically. Arguably the most popular Lacey-inspired work is "Best Friend September" by Seth Meth69.

Tier 3 Lacey Games Zine/Lacey's Fanzine - Lacey's Fanzine is a Lacey Games fanzine that can be downloaded for free on itch.io. It includes art, short stories, poems, and merch all submitted by fans of Lacey Games. The project was also followed by me. Unofficial/unlicensed games - There have been many games made based on the Lacey Games web series, the majority of which have attempted to recreate the games featured in the series. None of these games are official, and i have confirmed that only the Lacey-related content featured on their YouTube channel is canon to the series. The most well-known and infamous example is a game based on Lacey's Wardrobe that was published on Steam in early January 2024. This version of Lacey's Wardrobe deviates from the original episode in various ways, with inaccurate backgrounds, and an extended narrative that does not follow the plot of the episode the game was based on. Initially, this game had to be paid for in order to play, but following fan backlash, the game's developer made it free to play, and also added a disclaimer acknowledging that it was no way official Lacey Games content. Despite this, the game would later go viral and began being played by several Let's Players on YouTube, the majority of whom were not aware that it was not the original source material. Initially, i did not mind this, until YouTube Bijuu Mike played the game, unaware that it was a fan game. This led to me addressing the issue publicly on Twitter, and issuing a formal request to the game's developer to have it removed from Steam, which they did. Bijuu Mike also apologized to me and would then upload two video commentaries focusing on the actual Lacey Games web series. Lacey's Wardrobe also has a handful of unofficial recreations available for download on the Apple Store. About us - The "about us" page on the Lacey Games website features a brief description of YaniAso Games' cofounders, Grace and Rocío, who describe themselves as video game lovers who wanted to create a safe space online for kids to play. The page also includes the bios of the site's three mascots, Lacey, Maisie, and Jay. Jaycey/shipping - Lacey Games has developed a relatively small but dedicated shipping community, with its most popular ship arguably being Lacey x Jay, more commonly known as "Jaycey." This ship became extremely popular following the release of the fourth episode, largely because of how devastated Lacey appeared by Jay's death, indicating that the two of them were extremely close with one another. Fans also find the "opposites attract" aspect of the ship appealing, with Jay being the quintessential tomboy, and Lacey being the more traditional girly girl. "beutiful!" - "beutiful" is a misspelling of the word "beautiful" that appears in the instructions for Lacey's Makeup Parlour. According to a Twitter post made by me, this was done intentionally to reflect the typos that many Flash games had in the 2000s. Remember Lacey Games? - "Remember Lacey Games?" is a scrapped fan made ARG based on the Lacey Games web series. The project has its own website and includes original characters that are not canon to Lacey Games. Lacey's childhood - The second and third episodes of the series focus heavily on Lacey's childhood upbringing, which was implied to have been extremely abusive, courtesy of her uncle. In the secret ending of Lacey's Diner, the ingredients for Lacey's final dish are all objects that she associates with her uncle and their homelife, including cigarette butts, a dead cockroach, pornography, a bag of meth, a used condom, shards of broken glass, and her uncle's own remains. Essentially, Lacey was living in a cockroach-infested home with her uncle who would neglect her in favor of smoking, looking at porn, and doing drugs. The only attention that Lacey ever received from her uncle was his various forms of abuse, some of which was sexual. Lacey's childhood is further explored in Lacey's Petshop, which reveals that Lacey's uncle locked her in a cage and murdered her pet dog, the latter of which was the final straw for Lacey, who retaliated by murdering her uncle and stuffing his corpse under her bed. Despite Lacey being at the center of all this abuse, many fans believe that she was not conceived with this traumatic upbringing, rather her creator, Rocío, is merely projecting her own traumatic childhood onto her creation. "I'd only be caught dead wearing makeup"/"vanity doesn't die!" - According to one forum post made by a parent in the fourth episode, they did not approve of Jay saying "I'd only be caught dead wearing makeup" in one of her games, claiming that any character who says this is not a good role model for young girls. This line not-so-subtly foreshadows Jay's fate and depiction in Lacey's Makeup Parlour, where Lacey can be seen applying makeup to Jay's corpse. Another noteworthy line from the fourth episode is "vanity doesn't die!" which is displayed during one frame that depicts a real-life image of a morgue. It is speculated that this line is alluding to how even in death, people are expected to look presentable, as evident by the process of embalming corpses so that they may be suitable for viewing at open casket funerals. Q&A - Shortly after the release of the third episode, i uploaded a Q&A on YouTube that served as their 50K subscriber special. A second Q&A was announced shortly after the release of the fourth episode, but has since been delayed after one of the featured guests fell ill. "I'm not here... she's not here... this isn't happening..." - Upon seeing Jay in Lacey's Makeup Parlour, Lacey collapses to the ground and begins sobbing while uttering "I'm not here... she's not here... this isn't happening..." to herself. This is obviously in reference to the fact that Jay is dead, and that Lacey knows what she's seeing isn't real, but she still refuses to accept the reality of her best friend being gone. Inspiration behind Lacey's Wardrobe - Allegedly, the inspiration.