In Which I Say Who My Favorite Of Your Living V7 Characters Is

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Hmm...

Me, me, pick me!

Erika Stieglitz is my favorite of your cast for a few reasons. One of the things that impresses me, especially with a character who has a very solid personality and an already well-developed arc in Pregame, is when they manage to feel natural to that arc and development, remain proactive in their in-game actions, and yet still be highly unpredictable. Erika has that going in spades right now. There are some elements of her journey to date that have been suggestive to me of something dangerous brewing under the surface, particularly in the secrecy regarding her motives at various points and in some of her more surprising actions. At the same time, there have been some really great points of brilliant, shining humanity; her encounter with and musing about shared history between her and Garnett stands out, as does her decision to come to Hel's aid when she could've walked away just as easily as she turned from someone who means a lot more to her.

[Kermit]

hi nerd give me compliments

[Primrosette]

Hi, please give me your opinion!

[Grand Moff Hissa]

By the way, I'm quoting because (unless you specifically disabled it) when you're quoted you get a big ol' pop-up ping next time you click the site.

sup

My favorite of your kids at the moment is Axel Fontaine. Axel's fascinating to me for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest is his unique relationship with Backslash's Andy and with violence. It's a mode of being utterly alien to me, and yet at every turn it's been sold with finesse and empathy and insight that just makes me feel like I absolutely get where he's coming from. I feel like there's some heavy narrative rhyming between youngblood and Break Your Halo, and that's the sort of thing that, properly pulled off, is a true beauty to behold. The latter thread does an amazing job of showing us Axel's emotional and mental state and the toll the island is taking on him without ever being entirely explicit about it, just through the subversion of the practices and mannerisms that have been established painstakingly through Pregame. His narrative chemistry with Andy is through the roof, and there's an overpowering unease and sadness that nicely balances the moments of wackier, more overt humor; the seams of his coping mechanisms are clear, and while it doesn't make Axel somehow constantly serious, it colors his humor with an air of desperation and inevitable dissolution.

[CondorTalon]

yo

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Me, me, pick me!


...wait no fuck oliver made the same joke i did, abort, abort

Right now, my favorite of your characters is Jonathan Meyers. Jonathan has been on a major and intriguing upswing for a while now, including starring in the hotel thread that gave me the most uncomfortable flashbacks to middle school gym lockers. I really appreciate his generally direct narrative style, but more than that I feel that at the moment he is absolutely brimming with potential energy all set to go off. Jonathan's first thread has established a number of goals and facets to his mentality, but right now his planning mostly hinges around his belief that death is inevitable not for the normal SOTF reasons but because the class will not play into the terrorists' goals and will be detonated en masse. This is good dramatic irony because we as readers know that is absolutely not what will be happening, which means that in roughly a day Jonathan's worldview is going to be fundamentally shaken. But what will come next? That's the delicious part. Will he keep seeking out his friends? Will he become more proactive, either in defense of those he cares about or to save himself? Will he give in to despair? Will his streak of mistrust of his peers spike, or will he overcome it? I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to find out.

[Yugikun]

ok but who is your favourite of my characters now

[Grand Moff Hissa]

HELLO

Kelly Nguyen takes the crown among your crew for me, and I think some of that may be for reasons connected to what we've talked about regarding your thoughts on her and trying to find her path. Basically, the thing with Kelly is she's a character who has a pragmatic/less kind streak within her, but one that's hidden beneath a carefully-cultivated reputation as a kind and helpful person. So, now, she's thrown into the game and is forced to balance competing wants and pressures, trying to simultaneously stay true to an image of herself that isn't false but isn't exactly true per se either, while also attempting to do what she can to establish herself in a position to survive. This leaves Kelly wanting to have her cake and eat it, which builds an automatic point of conflict into everything she does, because in most circumstances "stuff that helps me stay alive and jockey for the win" and "stuff that looks good to the people back home" are on opposite ends of the teeter totter. This forces her to make hard choices and work the balance constantly, always on the lookout for that rare situation that does both, and always trying to mitigate the damage caused to one end by an action in service of the other, something that's become especially explicit in her most recent post as she deals with Bryan like she's helping from the goodness of her heart while also running the numbers on whether he's more of a liability if he's been deafened, and whether he might make up for that by virtue of having supplies.

[Sunnybunny]

Who is your favorite of my one character? The people wanna know, it's me the people.

[MK Kilmarnock]

I don't normally do critiques until my work is finished, but this is simply who you like the most. I'll take a quick answer.

[Aura]

I would like to hear your opinions on my cast as well.

[backslash]

I'm here to add to your workload.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Me!

I favor Roxie Borowski at the moment, mostly due to her role in the wonderful conversation that took place at the shoe tree. I think the thread is special in part because of the ways it plays with early game conversations and conventions, and Roxie acquits herself particularly well in those respects, establishing normalcy on the one hand and poking at bigger subjects on the other. I love the way she kind of dances around the thing she really wants to talk about, tries to ease Kayla into it, and ultimately abandons ship on the topic when Nona proves unreceptive. She has a great voice, and a lovely tension between wanting to be kind to people but also wanting to push a bit and make an effort at getting her way. And throughout, her story has these nice, well-set-up humorous beats that land right without being tonally jarring.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

hi

Right now, I'm going to go with Aditi Sharma. You're one of the site's most experienced adoption-handlers, and I think that shows in the way you've been able to step into Aditi's shoes right away and give her arc immediate thrust and tension. I'm super intrigued by the premise she sets out in her introductory one-shot, of poking at holes in the rules and testing the terrorists on technicalities; it feels very much like the sort of thing a somewhat precocious high-schooler would try, and is equal parts actual-decent-idea and blatant-coping-mechanism. I also like that it doesn't pervade every aspect of her being; she has some really interesting moments with the beach group that tie to the slips in self control mentioned in her bio. She comes off as intelligent but a little snippy and a little full of herself, willing to take the lead but with an edge to that, and that makes her at once a sympathetic character and one where it's easy to see the cracks forming already and wonder just how she'll hold up over the next few days.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

if its not demetri i ragequit

Good news: you can stick around. It is indeed Demetri Futscher. There's a whole incredible amount I could say about Demetri, but a big thing I appreciate about him is the way he plays with being pathetic. Demetri definitely has some level of meanness to him, though I think it's important to note that this has been far more in the context of Pregame than the island proper. At the same time, though, it doesn't have the barb and sting it might with another character, because Demetri is absolutely lacking in power, which both dulls his teeth and explains his tendency to bare them. In most scenes, the scales really are tilted heavily against him, either due to his own lapses of self awareness (or else the self control to do something with his self awareness) or to simply being outgunned by whoever he's dealing with. And yet, at the same time, you've managed to avoid the most obvious pitfalls of having a character whose shtick is losing most of the time. Demetri has a lot of nuance to him, and is sometimes even more or less in the right--his defense of Faith, on the two occasions it comes up, feels genuine and from a place of empathy. In-game, he's managed to do a wonderful job of remaining his screw-up self, and I totally love that it's a person he actually knows whose name he messes up. Demetri elevates an early-game team-up/establishment arc through voice and attitude and consistency, and I can't help but feel there's actually a decent guy buried somewhere underneath it all. Granted, buried pretty deeply.