The V4 Read-a-Thon

[Cactus]

Professor. Glad you're joining us in this expedition. Your experience defeating the prime evils of Paris, Mariavel and Ranae were invaluable. I hope you're prepared for a mission that should be a little less taxing. In theory.

Your assignment? The name is a bit of a mouthful, but I suppose he's no Will from v3.

CBP: Janet Victoriee-Ser

Good luck!

[Tonyksin]

I havent read any of V4 so this should be fun! I will take a child.

[Cactus]

Ahhhh, Tonyksin, welcome. I believe this is your first mission with the SOTF Time Agency, and I hope that it won't be your last. Hopefully you won't encounter any horrors that leave you screaming back the other way, or even worse - forget who you are and be left there forever.

With that terrifying warning out of the way, your assignment:

Tonyksin: Jacqueline Myrie

Good luck, rookie!

[blastinus]

Looks like Samaya Boen-Hilstrand doesn't have a lengthy journey on the island. As a matter of fact, her pregame threads more than double the number of ingame threads. That would perhaps explain why I don't remember her, but that's fine, since it means that I won't go in with any presuppositions.

Going off the profile, what we can glean about Samaya is that she's a fan of the arts. And in fact, that's what we find her engaged in with her first pregame thread. She seems to be confident and proud of her work, and she also has very little qualms about undressing in front of her classmates. I don't have any interesting lines to pull out because her lines are mostly small talk and talking about stuff relating to her current life. There is a sweet little moment where she gets in close to Roman Jackson to distract from two other students asking each other to the prom, and this shows her tendency to talk a lot when she's on a roll. It's too bad that I don't really see that in the rest of her pregame threads, because she's got this bubbliness to her that would have been neat to see more of.

Moving right along, I suppose, the next thread opens with another discussion of Samaya's style of dress. There's a running theme where she wants to dress more boldly, but she keeps herself modest because she wants to adhere to the dress code. It's an interesting quirk. The main interaction in this thread is her mulling over a math problem with Maria Santiago. Once again, not a strong read. She's just kinda nice, but Arscapi does do a good job of communicating that she's not the best at math. That's something.

Now we're off to the prom, and she's here with Roman from the first thread. They grab a table and occasionally have small talk while this giant thread's going all over the place. I can see why the V7 prom is an entire forum all to itself, since this thread where everyone's dancing all at once is chaotic and hard to keep up with. She wanders around the thread and mostly just talks about her family. I'm not asking for any kind of big disruption or the like, but there's nothing to latch onto with this. It's just backstory-ing, which has a good point in itself, but is kind of a drag to binge-read. Plus it doesn't give the other participants much to go on as a response prompt.

Moving on from the prom, Roman and Samaya are bowling together and continuing to have a good time. She's joking back and forth with him and there's a bit more spice to it. One line in particular jumps out at me:

She sat down next to him and adopted a bad Southern accent, "Why Mr. Jackson, I do declare you are a true gentleman," she giggled to herself dropping the accent. "Somehow I don't believe you, but by all means let me see this brilliant plan in action," she said motioning to the lane.

Like, there's something here, she's really cheery and sweet at times. It's not all bad. But unfortunately, this thread doesn't last long.

Yet another classroom setting to round us out. And once again, she's just helping another classmate with a homework problem. She's a bit underwhelming here, but that's comparing her to Jimmy Brennan who does all the things and quirks it up like very few V4 kids can. She's a pretty normal kid and as a result, she tends to blend in to scenes sometimes.

Regardless, we are out of pregame. It's island time. And she's just kind of annoyed because of her poor choice in shoes. She hears a noise, she calls out to the noise and it's a panicking Felicia Carmichael, who she responds to with a "Hi." Even reaching into her bag and pulling out a firearm barely phases her. She just quips about it without any real fear or hesitation. When Felicia asks for her gun, she doesn't question Felicia's motives or whether it's a good idea. She just does it. Nearby noises don't startle her, she doesn't try to comfort her obviously scared friend...where is the spice she had in pregame? There was something there and now it's just really dry and bland.

Okay good, we start her death thread with her singing. This is something, but it's all there is. Everyone in her hastily-assembled group wants to sleep, so she volunteers to stand guard aaaaaaaand she gets bit by a snake. Now, having had the benefit of first aid classes, I know that a snake bite isn't often fatal. It's like 1% or less of snake bites or something. But nope, she just keels over and slowly dies of poisoning. She doesn't even panic at the end, just being like "Oh, huh, I feel woozy" and collapsing.

Final Analysis: There were the makings of a sweet, cheery character here, but that was all Samaya was. Even in circumstances where she should have been afraid or uncertain, she was joking around and acting sure of herself. Then she just drops dead without ceremony, her death even being narrated in a clinical manner without any drama or gravitas. As a result, I give her a score of blah out of 10. Not bad, but not great. Just kind of there.

I'm ready to go again, commander! Give me another assignment!

[Cactus]

Lieutenant Blast, you never let the force down. It good to have you back from sabbatical. You keep this up and you'll be primed for a promotion in no-time. I'm going to send you back out, and I think this might be a little more of a challenge for someone of your talents. Just remember to replenish and refresh your gear. You never know what's around the corner...

Blastinus: Kevin Harding

The time portal awaits!

[Cicada]

F it, while we're in Pregame still. Put me in, Commander.

[Cactus]

Ahh, Cicada! Your orders came down while I was asleep so pardon the wait. It's good to have you back on the away team.

As for your assignment? As one of our proverbial "big guns", we've allotted you a selection of big guns and equipment. You're going to need them.

Cicada: llario Fiametta III

Godspeed, detective.

[Melusine]

yeah

[Cactus]

Good of you to join the team, Lore. Having been around for the v2 business, I'm sure you're more than equipped to deal with any of the horrors you might discover on the V4 island! Just take a few steps to your right and make sure you've visited the quartermaster for your gear. I'm sure if you had your druthers, you'd forget about all that nasty v2 and v1 business for good. So instead of having your druthers, here are some Struthers.

Today, your assignment is:

Melusine: Vanessa Struthers

Bonne chance!

[Buko]

With all the harm I've inflicted, why not offer my "skills" to the force?

[Cactus]

Okay, security. You're dismissed. Yes, I'm serious. No, it's probably not a good idea, but we need all hands on deck, and this means all hands on deck.

Oh, uh - Chad. Welcome to the mission. I've been assured that your rehabilitation training has gone entirely as planned, so if this mission goes well, you'll be well on your way to full reinstatement to the time police division. We're all hoping that's the case, we don't want to lose any more good men bringing you back again. That last time was... whew. Anyway, welcome aboard. We've supplied you with non-lethal weaponry this time around, more as a ... test, if you will. I'm sure you'll do fine. If not? We might have to send Officer Vicky after you, and nobody wants that, least of all her.

Anyway, now that you're all briefed and the last security guard has finally left the room, here's your assignment.

Buko: Rizzo Vitoria

Good luck!

[Cactus]

Sigh. Okay, yes Endellion, I know. Letting Chad go down on his own could be a mistake. Yes, I know you've been on his security detail for a while. Okay, I understand that you have concerns, so - okay, fine. You're concerned? Why don't you go down too. I'm sure I can make the necessary arrangements with security. Congratulations, you've just been deputized. As for your assignment? Hmmm, let's see.

Endellion: Miranda Merchant

Won't throw you in the deep end, and this way you'll be able to watch out for any... combustible elements. Go get 'em, constable. Do this well and maybe you can transfer over to the detective division.

Godspeed!

[Melusine]

[+] Vanessa Struthers

First impressions: I didn’t know she existed. I’m not even kidding, V4 is just that big. Honestly, she has two threads but she might be a sleeper hit so we’ll see. I don’t know who is the handler (banthesun) but their username reminds me of the ARG where the sun disappears so honestly I might hit them up.

Profile: “Name: Vanessa Struthers”
I honestly thought this said “stutters” and I wondered if this was going to be a character trait. That would have been funny, and very V4.

“Hobbies and Interests: Shopping, Facebook, has tried to enter the Leadership Club and similar positions on several opportunities, feeling superior to other people.”
The last two are very interesting. I think it sets the tone for what type of character she will be in her threads.

“Vanessa could be mistaken for a number of other girls, given her unremarkable appearance. [...] Her breasts are slightly smaller than average, but she pads them to compensate. Her hair is a brownish colour but streaked with both light and dark inconsistencies due to multiple colouring and highlighting treatments. She wears it loose or in a ponytail. [...] The bridge of her nose is slightly more pronounced than normal, and her cheeks are a little thin. Her features sometimes make her seem skinnier than she actually is. This sometimes concerns her, as she feels it makes her look scary. With this appearance one could easily mistake her for the cheerleaders she despises so much.”
Genetics really did her dirty there. I like how in the appearance section it’s already about how she feels about other people. I find it interesting because I think that’s a vestige from another sotf-era. You wouldn’t see in v7 “she wears black clothes because shes gothic and hates everyone and kicks cats”

“To combat this she dresses fairly properly for school, wearing button up blouses and long skirts. This is mainly to distance herself from those she considers 'slutty' instead of personal preference.”
She gives the vibe of “I’m not like the other girls” which was really a thing around the time of V4. If she says it, I’m going to scream. At the moment, she gives vibes of a wannabe queen bee who despises other girls for being prettier or more popular. I assume she surrounds herself with people that she sees less worthy of her.

“Biography: Vanessa's parents were both successful professionals by the time they met and even after their marriage continued to devote more time to work than each other. It was in their late thirties that they realised they were running out of time to have children, and even then it was a few years before Vanessa was born.”
That’s kinda cute, honestly. I wonder if it’s going to fit in my theory of her wanting to excel since she kinda has odds pressed against her with being the only baby of the family.

“After one year of maternity leave Vanessa's mother started returning to work, enrolling Vanessa in childcare for long periods of time. Neither of her parents wanted to sacrifice the work they had put into their careers, preferring to spend the money they earned on providing care for Vanessa than doing so themselves. As such she had little chance to bond with her parents during her upbringing.”
Unrelated, but I wonder what’s her parents’ job. Also that’s borderline childhood neglect, I think I’m right about her being intolerable because of her childhood. I don’t even know if she’s intolerable, let’s hope she is.

“ [...] Vanessa was not initially as materialistic as the other children she called her friends, but soon developed this feeling through the desire to belong in their group. As she grew the rift between her and her family widened, fostering in her a rebellious spirit, and she grew to despise her parents and everything they stood for. She spent most of her time at home locked in her room conversing with her friends over the internet.”
I find this really interesting. It’s very teenager-y. “I made friends because I’m rich because of my parents but I hate my parents because they are my parents ugh time to go do crack with my homeless boyfriend” It’s very teenage angst.

“The development of this rebellious streak also led to an increasingly narcissistic personality as she entered high school. What started as her feeling of superiority towards her parents soon spread to her friends, taking a more and more condescending attitude to them. After a few arguments resulting from this attitude Vanessa cut her ties with the group, now considering them her enemies. She vehemently hated these rich popular girls and their style, deeming them as 'brainless sluts'. However they had already left their mark on her personality, and although she has tried to find her own style, Vanessa still matches their image.”
Yeah, I was right. She’s pulling the ‘I’m not like the other girls” but without the ‘I read books instead of partying.’ I like the tone of the profile even if it wouldn’t get past current staff because it’s very strong. You know how she is from reading half of her profile because of the handler’s vocabulary and how they insert Vanessa into the world.

“As a response to this realisation Vanessa made some simple changes to her lifestyle in an attempt to justify her feeling towards them. Dressing plainer and not wearing makeup were indicative of this attitude. [...] Her blunt and self-centred manner reaches into her interactions with boys, often causing them to dislike her. This in turn fuels her distrust, labelling them as she does the girls at her school. Despite this antipathy, Vanessa does wish she had a boyfriend, if only to help reaffirm her own importance.”
This is interesting because she decides to kick off the ‘rich girl look’ on her own as a mean to rebellion. She gives me Lori v7 vibes from her attempts to make friends but being too blunt to actually be capable of keeping them. Also the boyfriend thing is relatable, damn okay.

“Vanessa was never too bright academically, but she has managed to maintain good grades throughout high school thanks to a number of tutors paid for by her parents. Her results in maths are significantly higher than any in other subject thanks to a particularly good tutor. In class she rarely takes an active role in learning, and would much rather have someone hand her the answers.”
I don’t really have much to say about this bit, but I do feel bad for her. Even if her problems are self-inflicted, it’s like........ okay sis, you really need a therapist.

“Having alienated most of her potential friends though her anger or hypocrisy Vanessa now had little to do with her time, and she spent increasing amounts of time down at the mall or on the internet. Pocket money from her parents allowed her to spend a lot of time shopping now she was alone. The rest of her time she spent at home. Her mindless browsing of the past was now turned to trying to find gossip that she could use as a weapon. She used Facebook and other social networking sites increasingly in this search.”
Like I said, self-inflicted. It sounds like she was never able to make friends because of her hatred toward other girls, and when other girls would be like ‘sup wanna be friend’ she’d be like ‘I’m not a S l u t’ and like push her food tray in their face.

“Though she tried to convince herself she was happier without her old friends she felt somewhat empty. She decided to overcome this feeling by trying to reaffirm her own superiority. Without friends to lord over she tried becoming a school leader. However, without her friends in support she was unable to take any formal positions. She settled for indoctrinating girls from the younger years, forming herself a small core group of dedicated followers.”
I was half-right: she does make a little clique of her own, but it’s not with playable characters. I wonder if she’s going to mention it on the island like ‘damn I wish I had my 13 year old groupies to meatshield me.”

“Despite these acolytes Vanessa still desires wider recognition. Vanessa wishes to take a leadership role in the community to be proven superior to her old friends. She feels ill done by, and holds server bitterness about perceived injustices. She awaits the day she can finally be recognised as the wonderful person she sees herself as.”
So yeah, I did get her right. She wants fame and friends, but she’s unable to keep them or stick to them unless she’s able to control them because she repulses them away because of her personality. Along with her rebellion, she sounds like she has a lonely existence. Yeah, jeez. What a loser. It is interesting she sees herself as ‘wonderful’ despite being aware she is lonely and has little friends because of her anger. Narcissism is hell of a drug.

“Advantages: Vanessa has few to no morals, she would be more than willing to manipulate her way to victory. Also, she is unlikely to find killing someone as distasteful as some of her other classmates might. Whether she has the physical ability to, however, is another matter.
Disadvantages: Vanessa has made a lot more enemies than friends, something that would be likely to arise on the island. She has had little physical exercise over the recent years, and as such might find herself too weak for various tasks. She also has no survival skills whatsoever, and may suffer due to simple mistakes. “
This wouldn’t pass in v7. Or at least, you’d need some tweaking and a good reason for ‘she’s okay with killing because she’s a little bitch.” I do like it mentions her physical abilities aren’t the best in the advantages section, it could be put in the disadvantages section, but I think it fits the narrative of ‘she thinks she’s better than she actually is’ so she might have overconfidence in her physical prowess so shes like “yeah i can stab someone lol” and do it then be exhausted. Not much to say about disadvantage but I do like the fact it included no survival skills because it’s something you wouldn’t see now. It’s rare anyone has survival skills, so staff would go ‘normal kids dont know how to make fires unless its arson.”

Staff stuff:
“Designated Number: Female Student no. 91
Designated Weapon: Double-Headed Meteor Hammer
Conclusion: I can't see her ever being able to use the weapon, but if she's lucky enough to pick up a gun, G091 could make her mark on the game easily enough. And if she doesn't, maybe she'll provide some gore as one of her enemies takes her out.”
It’s so sad this weapon is never really used because it’s like....... too fucking hard to be efficient with it. I already know she won’t last that long, unless her only island thread is like 20 pages long, but I hope she does something fun.

Pregame: Her only pregame thread is named “Rumormonger” which I think was made for Vanessa. While she isn’t the OP of the thread, Solomir with Marybeth is, I do feel it might have been a planned move on their part. Nobody in the thread is a current users—Solomir, Evenni, banthesun, Wash, and a deleted users—so I can’t bother them with questions.

Also, Marybeth mentions a book but I’m not really sure it exists. ‘The vampire-werewolf-wizard hero had just discovered that his ninja girlfriend was actually a robot sent by his archnemesis to spy on him.’

Vanessa enters third in the thread which is already settled on the tone of the thread: it’s gossip time. Like it said on the tin, Marybeth (Solomir), wants to talks shit with someone and learn things about the triplets, while Darius (Evenni) is just busy studying. When Vanessa enters, it’s clear she hates the place. She calls it a “dank den of losers” which honestly, she’s not wrong, the other people there aren’t the most popular people of the bunch. She doesn’t hold them to a very high esteem and immediately starts thinking about sluts, popular girls, and how she hates it. She sounds like a female incel, honestly.

In true v4 fashion, there’s a song post. I won’t go into details but it’s Sweeney Todd and honestly, I never watched it. I am listening to it right now and it’s okay. Gordon Welt then joins but he’s the deleted user. It was also their only thread.

The action continues with Marybeth. She ignores Vanessa’s insults and continues to mind her own business, which doesn’t go well with Vanessa’s mind. However, Marybeth, who is nicknamed Gossip-Geek by Vanessa, brings up Dominic McKenzie about his love woes with a girl named Claire Lambert. It doesn’t have any quotations marks which made it hard to read. Darius proceeds to perk up his ear at the sound of drama, he just sits there and listen to the conversation without making himself known. It’s really v4-era type of writing, but it transmits the comedy aspect of it well. Fun fact: Dominic (wash) is actually right there, and overheard both Marybeth and Vanessa talking about him. The two girls are surprised, and it reveals something about Vanessa’s inner dialogue: while she doesn’t really care about anyone, she hates being bothered. It’s interesting because she doesn’t quip back at Dominic’s questions, she appears to be more interested in talking about people in their back than actually confronting them. She also calls Marybeth a slut, again. There’s some drama but it ends abruptly with Van’s final post. Nobody left the thread or did anything, it just ends there.

Slut counter: 5

Island: Again, our gal, Van, only has one thread. The thread is named The Outsider, I guess I could ask Oliver if it’s a reference to the book. It would be fitting since a kid murder another kid in it. (He said no.) Here is our cast for Vanessa’s only and last island thread: Atomic Waffles with Kevin Warick, Jonny with Charlotte Duclare, Anderson with David Anderson, and Fullcircle with David Matson. Only one of these handlers are still here (Oliver) and I’ve only read Charlotte. I enjoyed her but I should reread her again.

The thread starts with Kevin doing some smooth jazz music and Charlie is like “uh this is nice” David Anderson and David Matson joins and they want in on the jazz party. There’s nothing that signals that Vanessa is about to die, because really, it comes out of the left field. Van joins the thread last, she’s running away from no-one and is vaguely terrified. She’s the spark for the action because she’s already a severe mess.

Her nature of a female incel really comes forward the second she is ignored, or at least what she perceives to be ignored. Rather than reaction normally, and honestly I don’t think she can, she immediately jumps to the conclusion he’d rather ‘fuck bitches’ than protect her. But like... he didn’t see you. Keep in mind, Charlie is minding her own business, insulting guys in her head, and trying to hatch out a plan for survival. Nothing has been done against Vanessa, but I’m telling you she’s a female incel. The second she sees Charlie she’s like “omg what a slut shes taking my protector”. She just bumrushes her with her weapon, with like some rage because she happened to exist around her the guy she wanted to keep.

This doesn’t settle well at all with the crew who is like......... not doing anything aggressive and the only guy with a gun turns around and sees her and he’s like......... what the fuck and shoots her. Honestly, you can’t really blame him because she literally jumped out of nowhere with a meteor hammer and tried to murder a random girl who did nothing wrong.

And that’s that. That’s how Vanessa dies. She gets shot in the back, and lays there for like a day before dying, nobody felt like helping her, understandably. She proceeds to have a dream sequence where she does SOTF but at her school, kinda interesting because she just picks up a knife and starts fighting an unknown assailant. She gets double murdered when the shape stabs her. Honestly, bad luck all around.

Last thoughts: I wasn’t wrong about her in my first thoughts, but honestly I didn’t think she’d turned out to be a female incel. I assume it was the goal of the handler to make a character that would be unlikable. I don’t think you can call her a sleeper hit but she’s still interesting for the two threads she has. Also she’s the reason why the original group splits up so I guess she did that?

Giving her 5 sluts out of 10.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Wowee-zowee!

[+] Janet Victoriee-Ser

Welcome to College Football Saturday.

If you're unfamiliar with the standard practices and procedures of College Football Sunday, there are none other than roll with the punches. I will and can throw anything at you at any time, but it won't be me that's doing it. I am merely a vessel, a vessel through which the old and dead and gone may momentarily become alive and well and with us once again. A flute suspended in midair that only happens to make sound when a correct gust of wind whistles through its long tubing.

Today we are here to talk about Janet Victoriee-Ser. I have some special attachment to the name Janet. I can still remember the day that I was pulled aside by my 4th grade teacher to talk about my entry in the city poetry competition for kids. The theme was to write a poem about school.

"Good news and bad news," she said to me, out of earshot of the other kids, though not out of their field of view.

"The good news is that you got honorable mention in the poetry competition, and that you'll get an award thing if you go to the main library."

"What's the bad news?" I asked, and she shoved the notification into my hands.

"We are pleased to inform you that one of your students, Janet, has received the honorable mention for the city-wide poetry competition! We would like to congratulate her on her success at the ceremony on April 18th at the main library!"

Et cetera, et cetera.

Dammit, Janet. My first name is Jaret, and I'm used to people misspelling it. I've seen Jared on every single occasion, including in speech; various permutations of Jarett, Jarret, Jarrett, Jarred, Jaredd, Jarrod, and the like; a 'Haret' at the city wide band festival one year, a name tag made by my own band leader, which totally destroyed seventh grade me; and sometimes even names that don't even land close to my own, like James, or David.

This time, the fault was mine. They went off of the name at the top of the page, and, well, my handwriting has never really been anything worth looking at. Some of my audience may remember the day we posted handwriting samples to chat. I looked like a slasher movie villain, or a victim who had their fingers sawn' off their sockets and stitched to the wrong stubs. My lowercase 'r' hooked so far over that whoever decided this poem was worth recognizing also decided that my name had an 'n' in the middle.

What does this have to do with Janet, though? Well, two things.

The first is that, as a character, Janet is known for something far beyond her actual merit, whatever that is. She entered the poetry competition, got all excited when her fourth grade teacher told her that she won some sort of award, and then got all confused and negative about why her teacher was laughing so bad when she realized that her name, though spelled and scribbled entirely correctly, somehow registered with the poem grader as 'died by tripping on a dildo.' Dammit, Janet.

The second is that Janet is incredibly short, and I'm really desperately trying to pad out this review. I am a vain creature, and the idea of a grand return with a large thesis paper worthy work to blow the lid off of this fine establishment that we call the Survival of the Fittest Estate and Manor and Asylum Complex. 'My name is CBP, loser of losers; Look upon my critiques, ye bored, and despair!' But there just isn't the material for that here, so my grand re-entrance into the spotlight with this newly christened board and all that fancy pantsy schmaltzy schmaltzy mumbo jumbo wumbo is really just a corpse shamble into the flickering illuminated beacon of a precariously dangling overhead lamp. Dammit, Janet, again, for sabotaging my 'comeback', as if I left.

Janet has no pregame, so we start at the profile. She is a budding anthropologist if the sum of her interests are to be taken as a whole. Her Face Maker portrait makes her look seventy, but really she's decently young, because you have to be around here. She's short, and a little on the heavier side for that height. The profile is well executed and though it has a few mechanical errors, it's readable and not out there at all, until you get to the death of her brother Dennis, which she is supposed to blame herself for (dammit, Janet). It's not entirely unbelievable that a 19 year old would slip and drown in a river. However, it kind of puts the rest of the profile in a weird spot where the profile writer had to get the rest of what was important to know about Janet across, but sacrificed selling the impact of the death on Janet to really do that. And I get that profiles aren't high art, but there is artistry in composing them for certain. It leaves her with a fear of open spaces, though, which could make for an interesting running time if she wasn't handed a dildo.

It's like fate saw this profile and thought it was too boring, so it handed it a sex toy and said 'go explore yourself.'

Janet might know a lot about survival, but that ain't gunna do much for her when she's armed against psychopathic students with only a dildo! At least it vibrates, right? Isn't that kinda cool? No? Whatever. She's not going to last long... with her dildo.

Jesus Christ.

This gal has a grand total of two deaths before what you know is going to happen, happens. She comes in 228th place, and her death gets some hahas and hoohoos. But is what is there really worth reading? Is there some sort of absurdist spin on her whole death hidden in those two threads? Do we have a hidden gem, here? Or, to speak more crudely, was it at least an expensive dildo?

Not particularly. She wakes up in the Residential Area from a bad dream (saying so herself) after people like Jennifer Perez, Lucy Ashmore, Carla Conners, Mike Jeffries, and others lost in the sea of over-long paragraphs and lots of ellipsis, filter in and out of the thread. She dreams about her brother... speaking with lots of long pauses… through her dream… woah… and then realizes where she is, that place being Survival of the Fittest, without really so much as interacting with any one of the six or so people who are also in this thread at the current moment. Dammit, Janet. She shows up and basically begs people to respond to her with her entrance. All that she contributes is that her sobbing makes Allen Birkman convinced that staying where he is might not be a good idea, so he skedaddles the fuck out of there. Janet's handler gets the hint, or something, and moves her out of the thread because she saw a camera and got spooked.

In the second act of this frail, accidental tragicomedy, on the second day of the game, Janet makes her way over to the logging road because she doesn't know why, where she actually interacts with some people. She accepts the fact that she might kill someone right before she sees someone and decides to flag them down, showing how unserious she was about the whole having to kill people or be killed thing. That person is Ema Ryan, who has murder on the brain, or at least the concept of it, loosely. She takes the greeting and goes over to say hi. Sierra Manning and Josie Vernon also wander over. Stilted dialogue as Janet tries to greet everyone at once (Morrowind NPC) in one post. Other people respond to her dialogue by taking it and putting it as italics in their posts (I am guilty of this too, but here's it's a little absurd).

Ema and Josie (Sierra yet to arrive, everyone skipping the presumed arrival of her to avoid inactivity) regard fondly the idea of an alliance. Someone asks what weapon everyone got, and Janet discovers the dildo. She reacts pretty funnily, having an anime "what the!" moment and kicking it away. Sierra vomits on arrival, probably not having to do with the dildo, but the timing is pretty funny. Steven Hunt sneaks up on the group, but not in a going to kill you way but in an I'm shy way. He had an iPod with him, listening to some choice Beatles to go with fucking dying on an island. Ema laughs at it, is cut off by the greeting and the throw up, and hightails it out of there because things are getting again overlong fast. Josie also laughs because that's pretty normal.

And then, well, okay, there's no fucking way that I think you should have to read this kid to get this, so I'm just going to copy and paste the entire death here so that you don't have to wade through nonsense to get to it.

Janet watched as the group laughed at her expense; but then if this was the worst thing that was going to happen on this island, she should consider herself lucky. It was at that moment that the sound of Sierra throwing up that stopped everyone laughing at her as they focused on her. Janet eye-balled the vibrating object on the ground; she would have to get rid of it and she saw this moment as the best opportunity to do so. So she positioned herself parallel to the rive [sic] and gave it a kick. It landed directly on the edge of the river. Drat, that wasn't good enough. Janet walked up to the edge of the river and tried to give he weapon an encouraging final kick into the river.

Unfortunately, what Janet had failed to take into account was just how unstable the ground at the edge of the river was [CBP's note: Dammit, Janet], and as she raised her foot to do away with her weapon once and for all, she felt instantly off-balance, she rocked uneasily and fell screaming into the river. It was deeper then she had expected and the current was stronger, she was quickly whisked away down the current, making spluttered screaming sounds as she went. She tried to fight the current but her heavy bag pulled her down. She tried to unstrap herself but it was no use. The dirty river water had disfigured her vision and the feeling in her arms was rapidly decreasing.

In the minute and seven seconds that it took to drown Janet gave her time to think: Could this be what her brother wanted, is this her punishment for sending her brother to a watery grave. She knew that she had to stop blaming herself but right now it didn't matter. She had to try to save herself. She could just about move her shoulders out from under her bag, then she could get some air, but she could only make small struggled movements, and each time she tried the movement made lessened. She gave up, everything started to go black. Just before her human body failed her completely, she saw the silhouette of another body, it looked almost exactly like her brother. But how could she tell? Her body was already filled to bursting with river water and her lungs had given up completely, she limply opened her mouth and a few small air bubbles floated to the surface.

G124 - JANET VICTORIEE-SER: DECEASED

It's kind of hilariously melodramatic in a way that only makes sense if you don't really think about how horrible it is. It's such a comedic way to go, but is played so straight that it stops being funny pretty fast. The worst part is that the drowning part, where it describes mechanically exactly what it is that she does to try and stop and unfurl herself and get away from the weight tying her down, isn't horrible. Neither is thinking about her brother, although that could have been executed better. It's just that both of these things come after the fact that she totally unnecessarily dies. The dictionary example for "zero to one hundred real quick" comes from this fucking post.

And the best part? Written in small purple text underneath the oversized orange-red death tag is this little last quote from the ghost of her brother, who for some reason isn't laughing his ass off in heaven, but is instead supposedly saying this;

"Oh Janet, Janet, Janet; you didn't think that I actually blamed you, did you?"

It's not awful, but it's nowhere near good. It's just a thing that happened, and it happened in a grand total of six posts. It doesn't even qualify as a waste of time, because very little time is wasted.

Tl;dr is don't read the kid if you aren't prepared to deal with basically word vomit until someone trips on a fake penis and drowns. I can take another kid.

[Cactus]

Well, Professor... I've read your report, and that's quite a finding you've had there. I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy yourself a little bit more in your first foray back in time. Hopefully we'll give you something that's a bit more of a challenge for you. This time, your assignment is going to have you jumping up the order a little bit. Make sure you replenish your supplies, and maybe wipe that Patriots logo off your shirt as it might be mildly anachronistic, and... bring your waders. You're heading into "the garden".

CBP: Jason Harris