The V4 Read-a-Thon

[Maraoone]

Done with Vera!

[+] Vera Osborne

Vera is Also a short read, at two in-game threads. Her profile paints her as your typical moody art house liberal who Just Happens to know a thing or two about guns. Possible set-up for a player run here. There's also the bit of her being very selfish and individualist despite being a socialist, which also points to a possible player run.

All her pregame is spent with Maxwell Lombardi, who she shares her handler with, at prom. And this is where I discover the chaos that is v4 prom, because it is all contained in 3 threads??????? For some reason???????? So I basically have to sift through the posts trying to find the relevant characters to her scene.

There's a very similar dynamic between Edward/Jennifer and Vera/Maxwell, which leads me to believe that all Brits are the same. This dynamic is basically both of them looking to have a fling and thinking they're dating some newbie, when really they're both playing naive so that they can have their fun with the other. Vera and Maxwell only went to prom because why not? S/he looks hot?? Oddly enough for a handlercest scene, there's not much focus on the scene between Maxwell and Vera, the scene being a somewhat awkward, boring prom. Vera basically spends all of prom being like 'ugh get me out of here'. Between the two, more focus is devoted to Maxwell being his snooty British self, while Vera makes small talk with Sarah and Reiko, and wishes that She Too had a datefriend with brains.

Where Vera really shines IMO is her first thread, One of Three, which Sure Is A Thread. A lot happens in this thread, and it's basically three scenes rolled into one: the standoff between Rosa Fiametta, Vera, Craig Hoyle, Trent Savage, and Kevin Harding, and Maria Santiago's death, with a side-thing going on with Trent's subconscious. The latter two scenes Sure Are Scenes, and make me appreciate Vera all the more because she is my anchor. She is my rock. She is who I cling onto in this midst of all this chaos.

For our purposes and my sanity, we focus on the first scene.

tl;dr Vera and Rosa get into a Mexican standoff despite the fact Rosa has no weapon, Craig and unconscious!Trent drag themselves in the house after much hesitation from the two girls, and then Kevin decides it's a good idea to hold up a house of four people to get a gun and predictably gets scared off.

The Mexican stand off between the two girls is realistic, but it kinda drags? It lasts a bit too long then it has to. But I like Vera here. She has guts, chutzpah. And while the scene itself is too long, the writing between all the authors involved in the scene does a good job of keeping the tension high.

My favorite moment from Vera is when she just, like, turns into a ninja and grabs the gun from Kevin's reach, loads the gun, and points it at him in one movement. It honestly pushes the limits of credibility and seems low-key like godmodding, but one, it's very satisfying to read, and two, you get to see a lot of interesting character decisions here. You see, Kevin tries to hold up the house with a shovel and threatens to bludgeon unconscious!Trent with it if anyone moves for the gun, and Vera basically goes and does it anyways. Like, this is where her selfish side comes out. She also has a push-pull relationship with her gun. She's clearly very attached to it, despite being very anti-gun, because she knows it's her key to survival. But she also can't bring herself to kill because she doesn't want to betray her beliefs, not just yet.

Everyone in the party thread leaves, the standoff resolves itself after Vera gets the gun, and now we're at her death thread, Walk the Line, with Maxwell and Reiko. Vera sees Maxwell and Reiko fighting, basically saves Reiko's life by firing a gun at Maxwell, he shoots her, it's revealed that after prom, Maxwell hit Vera, and then it goes back to the present time where she dies.

I'm not a fan of the BIG BOLD ITALICS and EXTRA LARGE FONT used liberally here, but that comes with the territory that is v4.

At first glance, her death doesn't make sense given her self-serving nature, but I think it was more to stop Maxwell than save Reiko, although that was also a factor. I like how she dies trying to hold onto her gun, cursing at Maxwell. It brings more of the guts that I like seeing in her, and it highlights that relationship she has with her gun, the dependence she's developed on an object she's supposed to hate. She dies weeping, wondering about the fate of her friends, but it's warranted and doesn't lessen the defiance she showed.

Overall, I'd actually recommend Vera. Maybe give her a grade of B- or C+? Her pregame's not an essential read really, given that it's mostly summarized in her time on-island, but I like the attitude and personality she showed on-island.

One More Please

[Cactus]

Ahh, the train has entered the station! Welcome back from your adventures, Mara. Glad to hear that Vera was your stabilizing rock through the madness. Don't forget to replenish your equipment and take a second to grab a snack from the snack table. Your next assignment isn't that sizeable, but we always encourage you time detectives to go out on a full stomach!

Maraoone: Marybeth Witherspoon

[Cicada]

So, for Ilario's review, I have invested the majority of my review into a as-read live reactions... critique... thing. Almost 14K words of thread by thread contemplation and bashing of Kermit and Murderweasel that may possibly make sense in context.

But here's the gist of it:

[+] Ilario Fiametta III

Ilario benefits a lot from Ifnotwinter having the writing skill they do, first and foremost. Abstract writing is hard to sell (I’d be one to speak, for sure) and Ilario’s narrative is dominated by non-plot driving elements of extremely fervent, deep imagery that shows what is happening on island without showing island, so keeping the abstract details so engaging and being able to pivot on them consistently to push the story forward allows us to introduce what I think is Ilario’s biggest narrative device:

The ambiguity of his motivation. To me, as my pet theory anyways, there is a lot of possible either-or when it comes to what is actually driving Ilario’s descent into egotistical madness, especially because of the degree of control his character supposedly has given his pregame state. Is it just the anxiety that drive him? What is the real source of his drive to save people- that actual altruistic need twisted by his madness, or some fundamental character flaw of pride ripping his higher brain functions apart and replacing it with Bible’s worth of prosody? He’s not so religious, he’s not so fond of his father, somehow they both become crucial pivots of his character?

There’s a lot of question marks here, but they’re so organic and captivating. Ifnotwinter gets to dance around the answers by playing with Ilario’s own uncertainty and certainty, him being so self-assured for most of his narrative makes him a prime unreliable narrator who can’t accurately sell his own actions. It creates plenty of space for reader speculah to flourish, and to digest the really little details in Ifnotwinter’s usage of diction and structure to emphasize certain things they chose to write for any kind of reason.

Ilario benefits from a lot of strong surrounding cast: special shout outs to Jackson and Rhory’s non-placeholder content, and a callout to my favorite death in Kevin, who was a phenomenal ‘outsider perspective’ on just what sort of person Ilario had become outside of the context of his own head.

I don’t want to say too much here, to be honest. Ilario leans heavily, I think, on taking the details of the profile offered and warping them all to certain extremes, but not in the ways readers might have predicted going in. Ilario has a narrative that seemingly dominates any thread he’s in for the most part, with only Rhory and his Endgame companions ever matching the amount of technical mastery and eye-wateringly reverence worthy imagery… I’m exaggerating here, of course.

At times, Ilario feels more like a walking giant pile of religious allusion and tonal tropes than actual character, and that’s in the best way possible. At times his humanity shines through too, I really want to shout out the usage of his sexuality in Rhory’s context, that was phenomenally done, a very humanizing touch to the character. Ilario is actually a very compact character overall- few motifs, a lot of repetition to hammer points across, but it’s always fresh, always impactful. There’s a lot to like here. A lot a lot.

I strongly recommend Ilario as a read. If not for the amazing words (there are so many I don’t even begin to touch on), if not for the compelling character with so much momentum exploding into endgame as he deserves… If just so other people can come to different conclusions and prove me wrong, so on. Ilario deserves all kinds of perspectives in evaluation, I think, because they’ll draw different conclusions out of the details.

I'll take another and pray they're not as much of an effort required.

[Cactus]

Cicada, I have no words for you at all - you've taken them all to your own uses. You keep this up and you'll be stealing my job. Great work, as always. Less flavour text this morning as I am le tired.

Here's a character that I believe is a bit less involved.

Cicada: Logan Reynolds

[Cicada]

[+] 3000 words wtf

Profile -

`At 6 feet and somewhere between 2 and 3 inches – he's never quite decided which – Logan ought to strike a more imposing figure than he does.`

As much as this isn’t modern SOTF profile writing phrasing, I like this. It’s a humanizing little detail. As a result of that general willingness to have more florid and personality-rich profile language, parts of this profile get too ‘character voice-y’ or otherwise overly biased. Overreach, so on. The psychological issues that underpin the character seem to be very front-loaded, not very subtle and the profile’s a bit too scarce to sell these blatant character hooks in a subtle way. So, not personally to my taste, but we’ll see where this goes.

Pregame Thread -

Two posts in and our boy comes off as quite edgy. Self-aware in a very blunt way, with a very fast sentence-to-sentence turnover between observation and self-deprecation. I do like how Logan’s lack of knowledge of SOTF is used, in some way, to push the character interaction, using a lack of character knowledge can provide interactions with some interesting dynamism (how to explain, what to explain, so on). From the two-point-five sides worth of opinions being thrown around Logan gets to carve his own unique-ish perspective, some admiration for Bounce (the SOTF fan, run by Namira) in her passion, but generally agreeing with the boys at the table about the criminality and otherwise being disinterested because it seems too ‘mainstream’.

The thread very quickly peters out after that- with some conclusion provided by Bounce calmly disengaging and the rest of the table failing to exit post on out. Logan’s prose is a bit underwhelming and mostly thought driven as of this sole pregame thread, but he does at least have an engaging sort of mentality in the bluntness of his narrative logic (usually no thread of thought carries more than a short paragraph’s worth of weight at absolute most) giving his character an impression of being stubborn and quick to conclusions. Let’s see how that may or may not be kindled on island.

Island 1 -

Incidentally, so many threads in the tunnels latch onto that light/darkness motif. SC2 could never.

Okay I see what Chib was trying to do there but RIP the quoting of dialogue that literally ended the prior post was so redundant. Starting the opening post in media res from Daisuke’s discovery of him and working backwards through the exposition was a nice touch, I like that structurally. Though, the exposition does get a bit too info-dumpy- we seem to run through way too much, like a checklist of inventory and motivation without giving each revelation space to breathe. A bit too quick paced in information flow. I do like that we get direct pay off from Logan’s having learned about SOTF in pregame- he did research since then, right before being abducted, already hates Danya as of waking up.

The quoting of dialogue kind of works- splits the responses to Daisuke’s massive text wall in a way that allows Logan to get silent words in edgewise without needing to summon huge blocks of info worth of his own musing on what Daisuke has said without temporal context. I may actually have to adopt that as a possible tool for future SOTF writing.

Both of them manage to project a decent amount of personality in their buddy-up conversation- Logan’s more severe lack of humor is sold well enough by the relative curtness of his thoughts, of his dialogue. The habits of each writer, quoting the other ad nauseum to formulate responses, slows the pace some, adds some ‘blur’ between posts that literally slows the reader, and it seems to work alright. Kind of emphasizing a quiet moment before the storm, of sorts.

They’re both very practically minded- tactical and thoughtful, not too much fluff but enough room for the occasional bit of more meandering, humanizing digression to come through. Very Band of Brothers-y.

`Perhaps there was something he didn't know about that was being considered. Some kind of non-violence vow? An analogue to "Thou Shalt Not Kill" from one of the Eastern religions? He didn't know, and didn't bother to guess any further. Made more sense to just wait, and if Daisuke wanted to tell him, he would.`

Stuff like this, for example. Probably the largest amount of somewhat irrelevant tangent Logan’s thoughts veer onto, but still very much practical in context- considering if there’s any sort of catch in Daisuke’s character that might derail Logan’s player hunter plans, if in a slightly discriminatory and offbeat way. Very bash bros type team up. Thread even ends on a line-emphasized ‘lets do this’.

Island 2 -

I do like the structure of the sneaking around being somewhat discombobulated as people’s responses to Logan and Daisuke making it in through a window are scattered out and not temporally consistent- actually emphasizes a sense of chaos and lack of information for all involved. Nobody gets too repetitive- for once everyone isn’t quoting everyone else, which would have rapidly disassembled into mess of unnecessary redundancy.

Okay now there are giant internal narrative blobs fucking up the temporal forwardness of the scene- I immediately retract my praise. The sheer amount of people isn’t necessarily impossible to follow- there are two relatively well contained simultaneously happening events, it’s just moderately more unpleasant to read with a more difficult to track and less stable chronology, slightly ratcheting backwards and retreading with each post.

I like the little detail of Logan turning over the talking to Daisuke, thinking about how the gun changes Daisuke’s standing within the negotiations. Emphasizes the practicality he’s made his trademark. The exit isn’t the best handled- Daisuke’s handler didn’t pick the best time to monologue when so many people have to handle their reactions to his dropping a ton of info on their heads. But it’s a clean escape from the thread, at least. Was getting a little cross-eyed there, trying to keep some sense of the various narratives.

Island 3 -

`He'd missed it when Danya read it out, too busy with his self-absorbtion, but one name jumped right out at him.`

Gives us an excuse. And a typo. Typically if there’s going to be bigger internal narrative drive outside of the context of a character whose voice is that by default, I feel like openings to threads are a good spot to put that kind of thing. Daisuke continues to do a bit much in the way of dominating the flow of ‘space’ one can reasonably allot, sure it’s good stuff, but it does create awkward still moments, especially when Kris appears and Logan kind of has to gloss over a lot of what Daisuke said to immediately put out a time-relevant response.

Bit too much internalization of the back-and-forth with Kris, too much irrelevant digression, slows the supposedly urgent pacing of a scenario’s worth of ‘girl with gun at the door’. Sure, call backs like the one to Daisuke’s having ‘taken over’ the negotiating role yesterday (with it now being foisted on Logan) are good, but there’s a bit too much extraneous verbiage that isn’t necessarily justified in terms of ‘quick thought’, it meanders some. Kris is probably the one who most gets to monopolize the narrative- since she’s the intruder, she’s probably the one dictating the pace.

Kris bouncing on out, scared off by RJ, is probably a decent time for Daisuke and Logan to both take their time in frontloading the pivot in their respective arcs, the moment where they finally confront what they’ve agreed to do head on- albeit, to see it crash into nothingness as their mark gets away. Interestingly Daisuke has the brunt of that development- Logan seems to ‘accept it’, having been characterized as more aware of what was to come from the get go.

It’s a bit odd, actually. Logan plays the part of the ‘cool-headed’ one very well, the moral core of the group while Daisuke has a dynamic moral role as the other half of the duo. But Logan’s motives seem more generally obscure, I’m wondering if there was a better spot to reveal that hand, and then have Logan become more of a static character from thereon like his profile promised would be the case. It’s like, Logan should have been more frontloaded in motivation into his first thread, what we got wasn’t necessarily enough given the kind of stable role in the dynamic Logan is set up to play- that stability feels empty without a clearer look into his head.

Like, for example, the reveal that Logan feels he isn’t ready to be a killer feels a bit… out of nowhere, like the setup wasn’t really there for that to have the impact it should have. What could have been a very interesting swerve in their dynamic, after having faced real killers for the first time, comes off as flat.

Island 4 -

Like, here, for example. One post into this thread and I feel like I can’t really buy the current developments hinging on Logan’s having temporarily acquiesced his motive- because I didn’t buy that move in the first place, it felt cheap. This makes the possible element of drama to Logan’s sudden fear and paranoia- his sense of purpose, or some perversion thereof- being reignited when a girl with a weapon and a dead body in the tunnels paint all kinds of wrong pictures. This could have had the potential for a strongly dramatic and thrilling scene based on miscommunication and the emotional energy of Logan’s verve being forced to fruit by a different sort of ‘confrontation with a supposed killer’.

But of course there’s no pay-off. Logan has to double back with a double post, dropping the potential change of his character trajectory by necessity, and thus lacking for interesting motivation within the context of this thread- or in general. We also unceremoniously lose Daisuke here, with Logan forced to escape the thread without so much as a thought looking back- I feel like at least a little rumination on ‘wait where is the dude I just spent three some days of my new horrifying life with’ might have at least closed out the thread for Logan on a less vague note.

Island 5 -

This thread is framed as a detour- with Logan having not picked up the news on Daisuke’s death yet, which actually seems like an okay way to put off that particular emotional reckoning. We experience a few posts worth of Logan trying to get along with a few other strangers he’s run into, and honestly I don’t think it’s that bad. I like mood whiplash to an extent (not that there was a mood of any sort to whiplash between, given how undercooked the last thread was) and the pivot into a more introductory, relationship-building and banter-heavy thread is set up fairly well by Chib going out of their way to make sure they set us up temporally well before launching into a more downtempo exchange.

We also get some in-passing references to further build on Logan’s motivation, which work pretty well. Given the brusqueness of his character narrative asides have strong weight even if only tangential. Stuff like this-

`Logan decided there that if he didn't act as though he had a chance, live as though he planned to live long, he wouldn't.`

It’s quick and to the point, which seems optimal for Logan’s characterization as established.

Unfortunately the posts leading up to Logan’s exit are a bit all over the place, some not even giving the appropriate amount of context to tell what happened in the first place. I don’t blame Chib for quasi-ignoring the specifics and providing just enough general context to justify Logan taking off, it seems like the best move in an otherwise hard-to-salvage situation. Points for cutting losses like that.

Thread 6 -

Opens with a bit too much retrospective summation that doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know as readers- too casual in tone (as Logan often is in general) to really sell any sort of weight of this recap that might add a spin in terms of Logan’s interpretation of what has befallen him thus far.

Logan’s motive continues to be… inscrutable, and not in a way that’s engaging. He ping-pongs here, once more randomly picking up his player hunter motive with very tenuous justification (this one girl in particular killed a bunch of people, so I should honor Daisuke’s memory by shooting her with his gun!). In a way the sort of disaffection and disconnect that comes off in how casually Logan treats everything- Daisuke gets put to some kind of appropriate rest, but not much verbiage is dedicated to it- almost seems compelling in it’s own way, kind of extending Logan’s opening island personality and making him seem static, which could be intriguing… But the motive’s been explicitly shelled out before, repeatedly, and thus that potential mystique gets reduced drastically.

Also there’s some temporal weirdness here- Logan knows Daisuke died in this thread, but not in the last, but this thread is capped by the fifth day announcements so there’s a gap in between in terms of when Logan learned of Daisuke’s death and when he responded to it… feels like something doesn’t add up.

And once more he tries to assure us his motivation is nebulous and hesitant, when earlier in the one-shot he’d contemplated killing Liz with some amount of tonal determination. The flip-flopping is weak, there’s no IC thread tying it into a sensible narrative!

Thread 7 -

An example of when quoting what was said by someone else is not necessary is when it was literally the last line of their post prior to you quoting them as the first line of your post.

Logan manages to escape just prior to the triumphant return of SOTF_Help memes, but once more the static presentation of his character doesn’t do much favor to his brief presence in this thread. There’s an interesting casualness to his motivations- just wanting to wash his hair, finding someone he was familiar with in school in the form of D/N’s Ricky (who opens with a very strange, kinda godmoddy personal invasion of space of another female character) who brings up some amount of fondness. Again, mood whiplash is something I like in moderation. But his escape from the thread does feel a bit much like more of the same.

Not necessarily bad to stay in character, but Logan really doesn’t seem to have offered much in the way of expansion on the initial character hook several threads in- and what was offered in terms of the underlying motive/cause felt weak due to backtracking and inconsistency. Death thread is up next, so we’ll have to see…

Thread 8 -

I mean there’s an interesting digression there in his first post- the idea of his childhood dreams of being on a Ferris Wheel, juxtaposed with his more practical leanings in terms of ‘do not sleep somewhere I could fall and die’. Here in this thread the back and forth between Logan and Bill is somewhat reminiscent of the first half of Logan’s story- Bill plays Daisuke’s role with a twist, wherein Bill is not friendly and is armed, and thus we get to see Logan’s player hunter lean with a different angle of presentation. As in, Logan not wanting to be a killer is reinforced, which would be a good emphasis… if the thing being emphasized had ever been sold well in the first place?

I actually do like the angle Logan takes in his momentary hesitation when confronting Rhory- it’s framed as his practical doubt in the one dude holding the shotgun telling him he has to kill a killer, in him evaluating the situation and noticing that Rhory doesn’t look especially killer-like. It is a good usage of the characterization that has consistently defined him, actually, sort of careening on either side of the knife’s edge and not taking any sort of formal plunge to one side or the other. If the entirety of Logan’s narrative had been this waffling and he hadn’t taken clearer stances prior I think everything might have been better presentation wise.

His death post is reasonably well structured. The more blase tone sets us up, then there’s some big gunshots (okay slightly too big, the formatting is more silly than effective) and several paragraphs worth of quickly detailed visceral content, nice and brutal and effective. The thoughts trickle in after the fact, with adrenaline as the excuse, which I like. There’s a good flow to this all, nothing seems too out of place except for the big honking gun onomatopeias. The idea of framing his dying breaths as accepting the lie he’d lived- that he didn’t regret anything, is interesting because it actually does give a pretty legit payoff to the more dubious back-and-forth of his storyline overall.

It’s a good death, actually. Gives us closure that I legit hadn’t seen as possible to give, embraces what Logan was as a character, and even closes on a note of ambiguity- does he really mean that smile? Did he really delude himself that well?

Overall -

First thread was quite promising to me- Daisuke and Logan had strong chemistry. But that chemistry started superficial… and never seemed to delve deeper, which is where my main issues with Logan come from. Logan always stays on that surface level fundamentally- which could be an interesting way to spin the tale of this wannabe baller trying and failing to make impact on the island by having a plan and then admitting he doesn’t have the character to see that plan through. But then there are times where we *do* delve deeper, but none of those particular instances actually stick the landing. It’s like, when you’re going to reveal something deep about a character’s motivation, you have to stick the landing. Logan never does, which is where he falls off for me.

However, what verbiage is there is nice and digestible, Logan has a very engaging dialogue much as it is one-dimensionally bro and funny for the most part. He had strong potential and his death sticks the landing in a unique way, playing off the shallowness that seemed purposeful in his character. I think Chib just needed to stick to their guns- they tried to show us depth and insight into Logan but couldn’t sell it. If those moments hadn’t existed, then Logan would have been fascinating to me in the same way someone like Matt Moradi from V6 is- good economy of words and a character with clear motivation but obscured by a lack of particularly impactful insight.

I wouldn’t recommend Logan. Maybe give his first thread with Daisuke a read because that’s a good back and forth and island opener. But besides that Logan doesn’t feel complete to me- everything between his first thread and his death thread falls short in some way or another. And Logan is plagued by classic V4 issues of placeholders, inactive deaths, and so on, making what good stuff that is there to be weighed down further by factors beyond Chib’s control.

Don't give me another, for now. I move on to better pastures (kinkmeme)

[backslash]

Somebody got to Scott's threads on his page before I did, which is good because the board search function has decided that "walk" is too common a word to search so I couldn't find his one pregame thread at all.

Fortunately, Scott's short island time does a decent job of telling us what kind of person he is. He likes money, he likes art, and he's really not about this whole killing thing. His first thread is kind of weird, in that it effectively acts like two different threads and spans two days; a group of people wake up day one, most of them leave with only Meredith Hemmings staying behind to be goth in the hall of mirrors, and then Scott gets there and meets up with Meredith, Steve Barnes, and Jonathan Jarocki, and they all stay there through the next day-ish.

Scott's a quiet character, but I like him as a grounded, down-to-earth voice when crazy stuff happens around him. He stays detached somewhat in his first thread, and he doesn't end up sticking with anybody from it though he states intent to team up with Steve (I'm guessing because he ended up slotted to die and had to move on to that), but his internal voice is consistent and good. His second and final thread sees him confronting Raidon Naoko and becoming Raidon's first kill shortly thereafter. Even in this thread, he's not the primary mover and shaker, with Raidon and Julian taking comparatively bigger and flashier roles, but Scott remains both quiet and good, and I like that he makes a last-ditch attempt at self-preservation instead of standing around and listening to monologues, even if the monologues themselves are good.

I'll toss Scott a recommend for being short and sweet. He's not actiony, but he's a good example of how a short character who doesn't get to do a lot and dies a quick death can still be a nice little read.

Not taking another one just yet, but I shall return.

[backslash]

Well I guess two days' break is enough, give me another.

[Cactus]

Flavour flavour me brain borken atm flavour flavour.

I will update the main list shortly.

Zee: Kevin Warick

[blastinus]

So, Nick Reid. A bit of a meatier prospect than the last two kids, but that's what spoiler tags are for.

[+] Let the Reid-a-Thon Commence

The first thing we notice about Nick from his profile is that he's got more than a few problems, depression being the key factor for him. He's had some side activities like archery and LARPing that would be good for if he ever got his hands on a melee weapon, and he's got the moodiness and fatalistic attitude that would be perfect for a premade player. Let's see if I'm right, shall we?

No pregame for this guy. Well, there is one thread, but it's been designated "non-canon", since the personality his handler decided on changed between the pregame and the game itself. That's fine, one less thread to read for me.

Hie we to the island then. His first thread has him wake as many students do in V4, wondering if he's on the school trip somehow and then realizing that maybe, just maybe, being stranded in the middle of the woods isn't part of the itinerary. He's paranoid and alert, and immediately distrusting of the two students who show up to say hi. His dismissive, almost hostile reception for the SOTF fanatic Andrea Raymer shows that, even medicated as he claims to be, there's something off beneath the hood. He's got molotovs as his weapon of choice, and he quickly brings one to bear as he has to defend against an attack by Alex White. Naturally, and this is a detail that I really like, the bottle is unsuitable as a shield and shatters on Nick's arm, cutting it up pretty badly. This injury is entirely voluntary, which isn't something you see in V4 a lot, since everyone was trying to lawyer a kill in that version.

Regardless, this injury forces him to flee, and we see him at the gazebo, paranoid and angry about all the cameras watching him. He's apparently bandaged up the arm between threads, which makes sense, since there is a pair of tweezers in the medical kit. He could theoretically pull the glass out if he was careful enough about it.

Anyway, since he's decided he's had it with the cameras, he lights up another molly and sends it flying towards a camera attached to one of the gazebo's posts. Trouble is, as you may be aware, gazebos have more of an open-air atmosphere, and the shot goes wide, impacting a kid having a conversation on the other side. This isn't the first kid I've read who's managed to score a kill by throwing a weapon at random, and if it weren't for the rules of narrative convenience, that would almost seem unlikely. More unlikely is the reaction of Maxwell Lombardi who basically teleports up to Nick and starts beating him up, forcing Nick to run yet again.

Actually, can I talk about that for a second? I know it's GM-approved, but it feels so strange how a kid can just run up in a single post and not encounter any resistance or objections. I mean obviously, if you needed permission to approach everyone else's characters at all times, that would bog down a thread and make it hard to get anywhere, but at the same time, I feel like you could strike a balance somewhere.

Anyway, it's time for Nick to kill one of my characters. But first, he needs to show up, feeling tired, ragged, and stupid. He's had a rough time on the island already, and his nerves are frayed. This is all handled realistically and, coupled with Nick's preexisting conditions, makes it reasonable that he'd just snap and start slamming a kid's head against a wall when he sees the kid attacking someone in front of him. Which he does, though I misread and thought he was slamming Tom Guthrie's head into the floor. Here's my reasoning: in order to achieve the wall-smashing, he has to drag my character up from the ground where he's tackled him, line him up, and start smashing him, without any resistance from Tom or attempts to break his grip. What I thought was, quite reasonably, he had climbed on top of him and was letting gravity assist him with the smashing, but if I'd actually read what was happening instead of worrying about my own narrative, I would have realized that wasn't the case.

Sigh...I wish I could go back and tell my V4 self to read the friggin' posts.

Anyway, as he pounds Tom into mush, something else to mention is that Nick is still trying to present a calm and collected front to the outside world. He has a conversation with Jennifer Perez beforehand that's actually fairly friendly, albeit a bit awkward. This is important to consider. Nick is a killer and ready to spring into action, but he's not just killing indiscriminately yet. His first kill was an accident and his second was in defense of someone else. Let's see if that holds up though, since killing Tom gives him a sword which, we've established, fits with his interests as a LARPer. Things might get a bit hairier.

Well, first off, he has a one-shot where he dreams about running himself through with it. He wakes up, angry that the thought had even gone through his mind, and he moves on. This scene is basically just to highlight his degrading mental state. Ultimately, he leaves it with renewed purpose: he is going to play the game, and he is going to try to win.

To that end, he comes upon a sleeping Tabi Gwyneth and decides that he's going to rob her instead of killing her. His idea is that if he steals her supplies, she's going to have to kill to survive, which will make the island come down on her head without him needing to dirty his hands. Interesting strategy, and it would have worked out great, except that she has a traveling companion in Ivan Kuznetzov, who just strode in with a brand new shiny BKA awarded shotgun. It's only thanks to Tabi begging Ivan not to kill him that Nick walks away from that confrontation with only a blow to the head.

Next thread, Nick tries to get some rest and he's immediately interrupted, but outnumbered. He decides to try diplomacy and asks about the locations of the long list of people he's wronged so far. Unfortunately, nobody's playing ball. He's a killer after all, and that means that his hands are permanently stained in most people's reckoning. Some of them run, others appear and threaten him, and ultimately, he strides away, having accomplished nothing. Less than nothing actually, since he tries a fancy move with the giant thrusting sword and just fumbles it instead, leaving him walking away in shame and embarrassment. But at least he doesn't leave the sword behind. That's something.

Back to the caves, he tries to find Jennifer Perez and comes across David Anderson. They have a confrontational chat and Nick gestures a bit too much with his sword, accidentally making it seem like he's trying to swing it. It's interesting how Nick's handler wants his kills to have some underlying circumstances behind them. He could have gone on the offensive immediately, but instead he provokes a fight on accident, forcing him to headbutt the poor kid to death in what's essentially self-defense. Not that anyone else is going to see it that way.

In fact, Ma'afu Tuigamala takes immediate offense, hoisting Nick up by his neck and demanding to know why he's going after Jennifer. Nick almost wants Maf to finish him off, his suicidal feelings welling up again, but he rallies against himself and starts lying through his teeth, succeeding in getting Maf to release him.

Next thread, we get some fun formatting. Nick's handler has done some tricks with font colors in the past to show how turbulent his mind is, but this is the first time we get something as truly bizarre as...well, let me just post it.

There was blood gushing onto a grassy slope, oozing and trickling, percolating through
the rocky roof of his new life's home, soil and stone, tracking him, leading him,
dripping, droplets detaching from the craggy ceiling like miniature bombs,
leaking like
water. Tiny homing missiles
hitting his forehead, assaulting his mind's residence,
splashing off into puddles reeking of death and decay,
running down the walls, drilling into his skull not like
little drops of liquid, harmless beads of moisture
making little plip plip noises, but like bullets
streaming through his skull, unbearable reminders of his classmates lying
across the floor, dead because of what he'd done, hounding him until his blood, too, would flow
like a miniature river.

I guess I can say that I've never seen something like this. It must have taken a lot of work to put it all together like that.

Anyways, it's time for another kill, and this one, I'm not gonna lie, is a little bit silly. Basically, Nick stabs William Sears through the eye with the estoc and then beats him to death with the weapon's cross-guard. No amount of dramatic storytelling could make that sound convincing. More to the point, it shows Nick's increasing disregard for the bodies he's leaving behind, since while he gets attacked this time, it's with a makeshift weapon that he could have just knocked away easily. Killing's become so easy to him now that he can basically do it for any provocation, no matter how weak.

Next thread, I'm almost wondering if I missed something, since Nick is thinking about Liz Polanski and how she somehow outsmarted him. Where did he encounter Liz on the island? Was this something that had been arranged between threads? Who even knows. Regardless, he finally bumps into Jennifer again, and the scene is awkward, albeit surprisingly civil. Even Nick admitting that he'd killed even more people since the last time they met doesn't make her push him away, and there's hope that as long as they stick together, Nick could be in control, could perhaps even mend his ways. Nick is distrusting and unsure of her, but he's tentatively willing to ally up. And in fact, when Jennifer starts tearing up in the next thread over the most recent announcements, he actually tries to comfort her about it, and they share a tired hug together.

Of course it doesn't last. More people file into the thread, chaotically threatening each other and drawing guns, so Jennifer stays behind, trying to smooth things over and prevent any lives from being lost. Nick, not wanting to be caught in the crossfire, leaves Jennifer behind as he goes his own way. But oh no! As revealed in the next thread, he's left his medication behind. He's in the fairgrounds, at a spot where he and Jennifer were supposed to rendezvous, but as he's waiting, a guy called Marty Lovett comes by, digging graves for the people who died here previously. Nick's presence is given away by the arrival of Anna Chase, and Marty tries to take the initiative, only to run right into Nick's sword as he charges forward.

Not even distraught anymore over what he's done, Nick instead faces down Anna Chase who's threatening him with a crossbow. His death seeking thoughts creep in once more as he calls Anna's bluff, daring her to pull the trigger. She doesn't, and Nick decides to spare her because of it. I think it has to do with how Nick's been playing the game. As I've mentioned, every kill has been at least somewhat provoked, even if in the most pathetic ways. Nick has never been the initiator of conflict, and it's still the line that he draws, even now.

Next thread's a oneshot where he steps inside the house of mirrors, discovering a note left behind by Jennifer, pointing him to where he needs to go to find her and Melissa Li. But first, he hits on a potential discovery, one that could perhaps affect the game in a significant way. Reflecting on the collars, he considers that they're just an electric circuit, one that could be disrupted using the right method. But he needs wires, which he pulls out of the walls in sufficient quantity. We don't see the denouement of his plan in this thread, but hopefully it happens quickly, because there's just one more to go until the end.

Well, he finds the two of them, and as it turns out, what he's got planned is to remove the batteries from three flashlights and form a circuit of all of them together, using their collective current to short out the collars. They're hesitant, unsure whether to trust him, but Melissa's willing to try it. Only trouble is, it doesn't work, and rather than disable the collar, it ends up triggering it, killing Melissa on the spot. This is the point of no return for Jennifer, where she's unable to make any more excuses for Nick's behavior. Worse, Maf shows up again, and unlike the first time, Nick has no way of talking his way out of this one. His plan, his one chance for redemption, has literally blown up in his face, and now there's nothing left but for him to face the consequences.

The wiki claims that the confrontation between Nick and Maf is the first time that there's ever been an official swordfight in the series. Maf wrestles Tom Guthrie's estoc out of Nick's hands, Nick goes for Melissa's sword, and the two of them begin to basically start hacking bits out of each other, ignoring Jennifer's pleas for them to stop. For the first time, rather than taking the situation calmly or feeling depressed about it, Nick is absolutely angry, shouting threats at Maf and going in like a madman. Unfortunately, as he'd showed himself in the confrontation with Marty, when your opponent has a four-foot long blade, charging straight into it is the worst possible move.

Rather than panicking, Nick instead starts laughing as the realization hits him that he's going to die. He'd reflected in previous threads that the people who died were the lucky ones. They were at peace, untroubled by the need to kill, to survive. By the same token, he's been freed now, and his last act is to smile as he sinks down to the ground, his miserable killing spree at last brought to an end.

I really liked Nick Reid, since he was a good example of a spree killer who wasn't technically a player. All of his kills were accidents or him acting in self-defense, and yet he didn't have any real remorse for those kills. He was a complex character; not a villain, per se, but definitely no hero. He was just a tragic character, trying sometimes but always failing at redemption. Of all the narratives in V4 I've read, his was the one that's fascinated me the most, and I don't know if anything could really top it.

Could I get another one?

[Melusine]

maddy writeup

Spoiler!

First thoughts: I would use mine but someone, Blast, the original handler, said something I’d like to use before that. He said ‘I don’t think you would like her [...] She’s mainly a background character.” or something, and honestly. I don’t mind? I do like characters that are not always the focus of attention because something it comes to the cost of not respecting other character’s storyline. Some character fit the supporting role better than the leading roles, and if Madeleine is a great extra, honestly I’m going to like her. However, this is sotf so I do expect some front facing from her so now, let’s see if Madeleine doesn’t respect her own storyline and she puts others above her.

Profile: https://sotf.fandom.com/wiki/Madeleine_Smith for read along purposes!

Okay so from the first look, Madeleine is such a pretty name, I was thinking of picking it because it’s like the name of a death relative and I was like.... damn. Also she has bowling as one of her hobbies so I immediately respect her: bowling is fun.

Her physical appearance reminds me of a coworker so that’s fun. She doesn’t have an island outfit I’ll assume she’s in sailor moon outfit because honestly I’ve bingewatched it recently. Anyways, Sailor Madeleine comes off as this tiny girl who someone could accidently on and she’d break in half. She’s a tiny girl and she has cute clothes and blue purse with carkeys. I think it’s a good appearance section but it lacks an island appearance so me being me, it’s time to ask Blast a question about it!

“@purple girl killer I mostly pictured her wearing blue slacks and a pink blouse, with her shades on and her brown hair loose. [...] Clothing wasn’t my strong suit in the past. ”

Her biography is what I expected from her appearance. She’s a shy girl who is introverted and rather watch than act. I do like those kind of characters because I relate to them kinda and also I do like the potential they bring to the table. Like someone can be really shy in their profile but during their time in pregame and the island, you might see them break out. I find it interesting but I do hope that some parts of her original essence will be respected with her adoption. She’s getting adopted I think mid-to-late game by Rocky, and my last adoption didn’t really go so well. I just realized I had two Blast characters, but like you know, this is fun. He’s a good writer.

I think something else I want to point is the fact it says she’s lightweight but she is also training with a treadmill and does swimming. Wouldn’t you gain some muscles? I don’t know I’m dumb. Also I like how the profile is like ‘hey I’m too scared to do drama so ill just do the props.” It’s a nice touch and it fits the character.

Staff evaluation: Her gun looks she could sit on it and break it, it looks like a plastic toy you’d get at store. It’s also russian. I love russian guns, they look so funny. Anyways her eval is kinda boring, Noah’s Fence. I feel like a lot of evaluations for shy girls, omg is madeleine a sweater girl??? (blast said yes), are like ‘omg i hope she doesnt trip on her gun and die haha’. It’s kinda redundant. Like...... it’s always there. Always at least three characters in the version that’slike ‘oh jeez i hope she trips and die on her gun’ or something along the lines. It’s really................................. redundant .

Pregame: Madeleine has 5 pregame threads which means 5 pregame paragraphs. I’d like to mention she has no prom threads which is honestly a godsend because that shit is a mess. Literally, who thought three threads for 270 characters was a good idea? I guess I wasn’t the only one doing crack in 2011.

First thread is Q&A and I believe that stands for Quota & Anus because I’m dumb . Anyways, the tl;dr before Maddy joins is as follows: a bunch of characters including past extra in Rachel’s readathon, Sapphire, Abigail who I don’t know who that is, Alexander sees a newspaper saying ‘Al Quada, Iraq, Sotf in our world) and he rightfully goes ‘why is this in our school newspaper?’, Melissa being a sociopath putting on a mask to be like ‘i dont like thesep eople but i must be happy ’, Violet who is like purple, Tristan who is playing Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, and finally, our gal arrives in this cast. I should have mentioned the library’s book scanner thing isn’t functioning well and the second she passes in front it starts screaming, unsettling Maddy. She doesn’t do much in her intro post other than triggering the alarm, going in a corner and going ‘I could draw this ’. Which she proceeds to do, what she didn’t expect about it was the fact she’d attract people to her. Now it’s kinda unclear whether people are looking at her drawing or just like seeing Maddy around, but she takes badly someone seeing her so she drops her pencils. It’s honestly... that. Not much is happening other that showcasing Maddy’s social inabilities. I do like that the librarian is like ‘you guys have to leave’ I love it when npcs are like ‘hello!!’. She also just straight up books it and starts running away from the library. Was this supposed to be funny or dramatic? Let’s have a question round!

Question to Blast:
Me: Was Maddy running away like supposed to be funny or dramatic?
Blast: I don’t even know.
Me: thats a good answer
Blast: I re-read that and I was just like "What was younger me thinking?"
Me: i find it funny
i imagine a tiny girl going 'gotta go!'
just running away [...]
i likeher
Blast: She was so jumpy that you have to wonder how she even functions like...how does she even real life?

Second thread time but with Curly Fries, which I wish I had some. Again, she didn’t start the thread, it was Violet from the thread before that who did, however. I think they are going to be friends. That would cute even if I know how it ends. So Violet is doing some bowling with her dad, and Madeleine is like in another alley or something. She’s not bowling with them but like you know same place same time. Also, she’s wearing sunglasses inside. That’s kinda whack. She tries to strike a conversation with Violet, but she’s like ‘do you have change for 5$’ and Violet is like ‘no?’ and she’s like ‘omg why did i do that i hate my life’. I do find it cute that Violet and Maddy do strike up (see that’s pun) a friendship over bowling. It’s honestly endearing but Maddy going ‘oh btw ur dad is scary uwu’ is just another unintentionally funny moment. It’s... really cute.

The third and middle thread of Madeleine is Singalong. It starts with a song post by our 10+ years resident, Elena. This still jams really hard, like smack me in the face, thanks! Anyways, before that our homegirl Maddy joins, Winston is singing the song (What I've Done by linkin park), I still of Chester from time to time and I cry about it a little, and Kent is like ‘this isn’t america’s next top model?’. This time, Maddy is just minding her own business and she’s like ‘I’ll go paint ’ and Kent is like...... not having it. Honestly, he’s so mean for absolutely no reason like................. damn dude what the fuck. The thread just goes downhill from there. Maddy drops to her knees and starts sobbing and Winston is like....... “I’m already Tracer? Please leave me alone, what’s going on” and Kent is like not stopping like fuck? What’s going on? Another guy is like...... why are you like this? AndKent islike ‘yeeti just asked her what she was doing’ but like in the worse way possible and keeps putting salts on the wound. It’s so out of place...... like what the fuck. Blast get skipped and Elle is honestly such a homie she’s like ‘dude stop skipping him’ and Blast is like ‘uwu finals’ and then Maddy just fucking leaves. This was so out of place. What the fuck?
Fourth thread is Viva La Chemistry! This is another thread I can’t really go into much details because there’s 6 posts and Maddy doesn’t have an exit post. It could be a nice thread but Melissa had other obligations and I guess Blast was like.... okay. Also Melissa says the funniest thing in the thread: 'I hope that asking for things doesn't freak her out or else this is going to be a strange lab...' Madeleine doesn’t freak out so honestly...... character progression.

Her final thread is An after school meeting, starting with Peter going for a swim who is joined by Liam then Lavern goes for a swim. It’s okay. I wouldn’t swim at school because then I’d have to dress up and that’s weird. Getting naked at school is like...... so weird. Also, there’s no lifeguard so they could like drown or something. Anyways, Madeleine joins and she decides to have fun for once in pregame. She goes against her tiny evil inner dialogue and decides to swim in the pool with other people. But being Madeleine, and really like the other characters are picking on it, she fucking rams her head on Peter. What I love is that other characters are like.... damn why is she like that.... that’s so weird. Instead of like.. kinda ignoring it and doing things with her despite of it? It’s an issue that like when you are stuck with people for years you get used to people’s weird habits and I’m glad this is three threads in a row it’s commented on. It’s not big, but I like it. Also Maddy is such a mess. Like...... damn.

Main island time: Let’s do this!

Her first thread is Wants and Needs. It is started by Imraan and Michael then Violet joins after. This is a day one thread so it has the trend of people going ‘haha this is sotf lol’ type of v4 thing. It’s sometime dramatic but it’s also commonly like ‘yeet sotf could e worse’. I don’t mind it but it’s like... I don’t know. Anyways Madeleine is upset about her situation but she’s also like don’t mind it happening on a pretty day. Silver lining? I do enjoy that Maddy isn’t particularly interested in meeting the others, but acknowledging that Violet is there and that she trusts her makes it more believable for her character. She’s shy, not antisocial. I’m glad she isn’t like screeching at people like a vampire at sunlight which can be a pitfall for people roleplaying shy characters. Maddy does that in pregame but apparently she chills in the maingame so yeah. Anyways, Maddy is followed by Edward, which we saw his death last time, and Vivien who we also saw on the death count but with someone else. I won’t lie I was bored until Staff decided to have an inactivity death. I do like their dialogue but I’m not a fan of like... dragging things out. I do understand the principle of repeating what others said in italics but for a reader it is not fun or enjoyable due to the fact you have to reread it again and each other character do it and they all react separately. It’s that. Anyways I gotta make a second paragraph so 3, 2, 1.

Okay so Jared arrives and everyone is like ‘yeah let’s all settle down el o el’ and the person who was assigned to killing Jared off was like... either really in character or really out of character, I can’t tell. Either way, I don’t like it because it makes no sense. He runs to a group, screaming, firing his gun and he’s like ‘oh its okay shotgun left teehee’ because he wants them to be careful? What the fuck. Madeleine is like...... what the fuck too, and she shoots him. I don’t really understand the purpose of that type of death slash handling character inactivity because it just feels so out of place. OP is like ‘wassup I guess i gotta kill this character time to make them run to a crowd yeet’ like...... I get it he has to die but like..... make him trip or something, or exposure not like....... oh btw who wants to kill rando guy? You? Hes coming. Anyways, I don’t like it. It feels really forced and not..... fun. Yeah, anyways. Afterward everybody who was prior to that ‘omg let’s not split up’ but for like vivien are like ‘yeah let’s all split up’ which I guess fits? They just saw the island is real and being around other people gets you killed so points for that? Madeleine’s narrative from the kill is most real I’ve gotten in the readathon. She’s obviously like..... shit fam I didn’t want to do that but I did it, and obviously feels guilty but at the same rationalizes that if she hadn’t others would have died. So do I hate this thread? No, but I don’t like it, but it’s not because of Madeleine so that’s fine.

Her second thread is Calculations. Originally I called Rosa a ‘thrwin’ of one of the finalist but then I realized that’s not a word so yeah, yikes. I think it might be Day Two, I am not sure. However, Rosa seems aware of the mess that’s going on with her brother with his kiss of death so...... thrwins psychicness? I love it. But really, I like the little opener with Rosa and Madeleine being like ‘why are you naked’ and shes like ‘uhhhhh let me get dressed up.’ Harun Kemal, which is like..... gianni’s character and Rashid, who I think I keep seeing him so honestly I’m so sorry if I forget to say things about him, join and they are like ‘omg we are so paranoid and tired’. Which is understandable but both say it and it’s like.. is a hive mind going on? Are we going to see 3-in-1 on the island? I do enjoy the scene because the boys are like ‘shit what do we do, do we stay hidden or do we go see them’ and Rosa is like.. ‘lol where are my brother and sister’ and it’s a nice scene because like..... it’s nice. I’m not smart but that’s my response why I like it. Madeleine started out with a leading role but she kinda pushed to the back by Rosa so she’s supporting. Anyways, for some reason, Rashid is like... Madeleine is a fucking threat. Which is right because she killed someone but on the announcement it was like ‘mhm, she shot someone who was running at her’ and like I do understand the part where you might believe that Danya is lying but that doesn’t come up so that’s that. Rashid is not in the mood and he really wants Harun to shoot Madeleine because.. that would make him less of a killer than her? I don’t get it, it really reads weird because like..... why are you suddenly so mad? It goes like this:

rashid: WHAT HAPPENED
maddy: oh yeah it was an accident lol
rashid: OMG JUST SHOOT HER
harun: what the fuck
maddy: okay gtg bye

I liked the thread until Rashid decided to like push things into action which felt not out of place but really disproportionate. I don’t know if it’s in character. I like Maddy in it because she and Harun felt like two sane men looking at Rashid being like... what the fuck. At first I thought this said ‘He briefly eyed the half-consumed bottle of pills, tucked away just to the top of the bag.’ took half of his pills and I was like... that’s how you kill your liver dude. Anyways next.

Thread number three titled Fuck. is when I realized I didn’t have any quotes for Madeleine. So let’s try to find one also she’s 4’10 which is so small, you could crush her with your hands. Anyways, this thread starts with Mike Jeffries repeating the title two times. From what I understand Mike got stuck in the tunnels and he couldn’t find a way out and Maddy happens to find him during her
- wait I was in the tunnels in scdos and I also got lost – little search for Anna Chase who was the girlfriend of Jonathan. I do love Madeleine having this goal in mind since it gives her a drive, without it she would just be wandering from threads to threads without any goal in mind which is really weird from an IC perspective. Madeleine is trying to do what’s right despite killing someone’s boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend in this case) so her survival isn’t the main focus therefore it makes sense she’s actively searching someone and wandering on the island, her goal is to find redemption. This thread consolidates her goal and she even like talks about it to Mike. They make a little truce and they sleep near each other which I think is kinda cute, anyways. I do like this thread because Madeleine’s new goal on the island is set and the tone of the story has changed: it isn’t about Maddy trying to survive, it’s Maddy trying to do what’s right. I know her motivation changes with her adoption but I do enjoy the part with Blast.

In her fourth thread, Cool Ranch, she meets back with her best friend, Violet, and I have something to say about that. She is obviously glad to meet Violet but also, she doesn’t stick with her, and Violet doesn’t really care? The relationship feels one-sided: Madeleine is like ‘this is my best friend’ and Violet is like ‘oh i did bowling with her once we are friends I guess’. It’s honestly kinda sad. Anyways, this thread takes place in north of the felled forest where Violet and Mike Moretti are just like... walking around? Jesse and Courtney and Alan all join. The thread is honestly very crowded by the point Maddy joins, I do like the fact Blast takes notice of the details around the area and goes ‘jeez that’s a body that got fucked up’ because it’s always nice to refer to the past events that took place in the locations. Madeleine is glad to see her friend Violet but she pulls out her gun when she realizes that a)there’s a lot of people and b) she’s a known killer and some people might not like that. Afterward, a final character joins and that’s Jimmy Robertson. Everyone is glad to see that nobody here islike... wanting to kill each other but it doesn’t stay that way: Daisuke gets blown up because of the actions of Liz Polanski. Madeleine is, at first, glad to hear that her teacher Mr. Kwong is still alive but she quickly realizes that something is wrong when he announces that someone is about to get blown up. Everybody has their own reaction, ranging from indifference to grudge, but I will go into details with our girl Madeleine. Previously, she wanted to find Anna but her goal shifted to killing Liz. I do understand why her mind was changed. Is Anna still a priority? Yes, but she was pushed to the side by Liz who was now an active threat for anybody. At least, that’s what she thinks she is since anybody could (and it does happen) get blown up because of Liz’s actions. I do find it interesting that Madeleine is trying to rationalize her reaction: she’s not a player, she wants to make things right. I also enjoy the fact that Maddy just books it after thinking about that: she was scared that if she told Violet, the latter would turn on her, but in a twist of irony, both are hunting down Liz now. Miscommunication kinda killed their relationship, RIP.

The Middle Children of History is her fifth thread. But first, a little interview with Blast!


purple girl killerToday at 10:20 AM
@Blastinus i wrote a tiny thing in the madeleine's critique and i'd like your thoughts about it " I do love Madeleine having this goal in mind since it gives her a drive, without it she would just be wandering from threads to threads without any goal in mind which is really weird from an IC perspective. Madeleine is trying to do what’s right despite killing someone’s boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend in this case) so her survival isn’t the main focus therefore it makes sense she’s actively searching someone and wandering on the island, her goal is to find redemption. "(edited)
the goal i refer to is finding anna
BlastinusToday at 11:19 AM
It’s not incorrect but her quest to find a particular character doesn’t really go anywhere.
It’s a subplot that’s abandoned before it can reach an actual conclusion.

purple girl killerToday at 11:24 AM
thank you

So spoiler alert: the Anna Chase chase will... not be succeeded or completed. Well, that’s too bad. Thread time: Garrett Hunter just got shot and Madeleine is the first person on the scene. She wants to help which I do enjoy for reasons I’ll go more into later. Garrett’s pride seem to be against being saved by a girl, but he kinda lose consciousness and Madeleine is like... I’ll still fix him even if he insulted me. While her motivations to hunt down Liz isn’t really good, she still is, at her core, someone who cares about others. She could have let Garrett died and nobody would have blamed her but she still goes out of her way to help Garrett. It’s a nice little touch. She even stays with him to make sure he’s okay when he wakes up and when he does, he’s actually thankful. It’s a nice thread. I like it. Madeleine might have bad intentions when it comes to Liz, but she is not a bad person, she wants to make things right.

Next thread is a decisive thread for the Liz storyline, but is it for Madeleine? Let’s see if The Beggar King set in the Mansion will cause something fun with Madeleine. Previously, Liz and Mirabelle teamed up to form the ‘Let’s Fuck Some Shit Up’ team. Jeremy Franco and Garrett Hunter, who was saved by Madeleine in the previous thread, both arrives at the Mansion, musing over their situations and the fact that Liz is right there. Madeleine comes to the realization that Liz isn’t the girl that the terrorists painted her. She’s an injured, weak, and dying girl; not someone who is blowing up people’s collars for fun. Garrett, Brendan, Jeremy and Mirabelle are all on Liz’s side now and Madeleine comes to the realization, either out of dogmatism or her emotions, that she is, fundamentally, unable to kill Liz. I enjoy this thread because Madeleine is once again without a goal as she understands that it is much easier to say she wants to kill someone than actually doing it. She is the only character who doesn’t follow Liz to The Gully, but that doesn’t mean she is immoral. She is fundamentally against what Liz is causing, but at the same time, cannot bring herself to stop her because she knows that she wouldn’t be better than the rest. It’s a nice thread, I like it. Madeleine is, however, left without a motivation again so I assume it’s time to wander around the island. Also something tragic is that Madeleine is not wrong: staying with Liz will get you killed. Is this when her desire of self-sustenance come up? Is that why she starts killing later on? Perhaps, or maybe it’s the handler change. But I do like to think it’s because the whole Liz think made her realized that, perhaps, what would be the most right thing to do, would be to survive.

Day 7 starts with I Was a Teenage Hand Model, where Autumn is like ‘I’m a bad bitch, fuckers.” I will not skip over this thread despite Madeleine only having two posts in it, but I don’t have much to say. I do enjoy this little quote of her: “Maddy didn't want to die because she'd let her guard down. If she was going to die, she'd make her own funeral pyre, so to speak, rather than letting someone else make a funeral pyre out of ship wood.” It’s really her new motivation, making sense out of something senseless. She doesn’t want to die meaninglessly (is that a word?) despite being unable to find sense in this situation. We sure do love existentialism.

Her next thread is started by Tabi and it’s titled White Sparrows. So let’s talk about it. Maddy joins second and I feel I have to tell you guys that’s when Rocky takes over so next paragraph is going to be my feelings about blast!Maddy. Stay tuned, fuckers. Anyways, this thread doesn’t appeal to me that much? Sounds kinda mean but this is another case of ‘there’s too many people for my braincells to understand what’s going on’ so I have to focus solely on Madeleine. Did I ever mention I almost picked the named Madeleine, yeah that was fun. Okay, for real now, Madeleine isn’t as insane as she thinks she is which is a fun touch. Madeleine’s behaviour up until now is rather... normal? She’s actually handling the stress of the island pretty well, all considered. She does feel guilty and ‘wasted’ as in like sad, but she is doing very well. I do enjoy her whole ‘where did my imagination go ‘ because it’s realistic coming from her. She’s an artist and without it she feels lost. It does kinda feel like coming-of-age theme of just like losing things that bounded you in your childhood. In this case, it ends with her dying but that’s okay. A lot of people are joining the thread like Janet, Maria and Jackie, which all hae their own little goals and all, but they are really interacting with Madeleine. In the last Blastinus post, Maddy goes back to her old mission to find Anna Chase and I think it’s a nice little touch, honestly. So, yeah. That’s it for Blast!Maddy. Rocky takes over and he keeps the little narrative of Madeleine by making her disappointed that nobody knew where was Anna, and she leaves.

Blast’s Maddy: Alright, I wrote 4.5k words on Blast’s Maddy and that’s the most I’ve written for a character yet so that shows something right? I like her. She isn’t the most interesting character I’ve read but I do enjoy the fact that she’s grounded and not like... jumping all over the place. Blast mentioned earlier that she would join threads then leave, doing nothing, but that wasn’t totally true. She always have a tiny goal in her mind, and that’s good enough. She isn’t wandering around and doing nothing, she is either searching Anna to get closure, searching Liz to kill her, and that fails when she realizes she fundamentally cannot, and finally comes back to her old goal. She’s not wandering without a goal, she is searching for a meaning on the island. That’s good enough for me. Also, one of the thing I enjoyed is that Maddy broke out of her shell and actually interacts with people now, so I hope Rocky will keep that going. Finally, I want to say that’s she’s not bad. I recommend reading Blast!Maddy for anybody who wants to see the inside of V4 in a grounded way. So yeah Blast!Maddy gets a 8 depressed artsy girl out of 10 so yeah. I like her .

Rocky now. Before thoughts: I don’t really have good experiences with past Rocky character but he might surprise me. Chat was like ‘RIP’ when I announced it was his turn, but really it might end up like Rachel. So, let’s see.
... Because I Can't Make It On My Own is the ninth thread and first Rocky!Maddy thread on the island. It starts with Simon Telamon listening to the announcement so it’s day 9. Liz is on the announcement and nothing from Maddy like ‘bitch had it coming’ or even like an acknowledgement from it? Idk, that’s my first grip. But also, Maddy is back at searching Anna and Violet, so I guess that’s okay? I don’t know, I feel like the Liz part of her storyline is still important but what do I know. That’s kinda PA. Let’s not be PA. Okay, after the introduction of Maddy, Simon has like a fever dream with Clio who died, literally, 100 kids ago, which that’s fucking whack. V4 is so huge, like.. shit. Okay I know I just ragged on Rocky, but the tone that he is using for Maddy isn’t one I like. I don’t think the voice of Bmaddy is respected. At this point, Maddy wasn’t that scared anymore, she liked her new odds and she was rather confident. The way Rocky is approaching her is more like... a Day 2 slash Day 3 Maddy so that rubs wrong. Anywa- wait I gotta say that Maddy said ‘he-hello’ three times now so I’m going to count it. Okay, for realz, Garcie joins with her buddy Nick LeMonde holding Jessica’s hands, Cisco Vasquez and other people. There are too many people for me to go in like details about them, and Madeleine doesn’t have a front role so I’ll explain simply. Teo wants to kill Simon because the latter is a killer, but Simon is like ‘aren’t all of you guys killer too lol’ so he fights back but whacks Gracie over the head when she tries to defend Teo, and she dies. In the meanwhile, Maddy doesn’t do much and I can’t blame because she just arrived and knows nothing of the past between the others. This isn’t an important chapter in the life of Maddy but I do enjoy like... Rocky dropping the ‘uwu im so shy’ thing because she goes back to normal slash blast Maddy and just fucking books it. I’m okay with the ending, the start was kinda rough and I think it’s fair to assume he was, and probably keep, searching for the right way to approach Madeleine.

Her tenth thread is another thread I could skip, but I won’t because it’s the Intermission. Omg I’m really getting good at making up sentence with thread titles now, watch me win v7 lol. Anyways, Intermission is, like on tin, a little pause. It’s the inbetween of two threads and we don’t really get to see her development as a character, there is an important part that is shown.
“She still needed to find Violet and Anna. It had been over a week since she began this mission, and she hadn't exactly done anything towards that goal. Sure, she pretended, kept saying to herself she was looking for them, but it was just a way for her to justify her not doing it.”
I think Maddy going from bright-eyed ‘I’ll find people and make it right’ to kinda cynical and jaded ‘I just need something to keep me going’ is a valid transition. She’s been there for about ten days, shit is getting rough, people are dying. It does make sense that the little light inside of her that existed in the past is dying from everything happening. I think Rocky could have went in more details, and more like showed it through her actions, but I do like the progression. I just hope it stays coherent with her narrative in the future, which is one of my fear.
You'll Have To Excuse Me, I'm Not At My Best is when the quest to find Anna Chase officially fails. Anna escaped but she is listed as dead because that’s how it rolls. Anyways, now finding Violet is her main priority. She is followed by Trent Savage in the post order. He is also searching for Violet, but lost his ally Josie when he was wandering around. Understandable, I lost my ally when I went to pee and when I came back, she was dead, it was awkward. Anyways, they have a little talk and they both realize they are both seeking Violet. Thing is, for some reason, Trent is like ‘Madeleine is a savage out of for blood and murder’ and....... idk that’s just weird? She killed someone literally 9 days ago, and she is someone you didn’t really know. It’s just weird that he would think she is a bloodthirsty killer when he has no evidence she is and she didn’t shoot you on the spot when she could. He is also really living up to his surname by being a terrible person toward Madeleine for..... nothing? I don’t know, I must be missing context but Trent fucking bblows up and starts being a little shit, and Maddy is like ‘wtf dude maybe she doesnt want to be friend with a guy like you’ and he really doesn’t take it well. This feels out of place, but not because of Madeleine, but because of Trent. I think they had to wrap up their death fast and they were like ‘alright let’s create drama’. I haven’t read Trent and I might get to read him in the readathon, but this feels so out of place. Anyways, he does the stupid person thing and grabs the gun of Maddy, expecting her to like....... be nice? Does he have a death wish? Is that it? He has a death wish? Anyways, in self-defence, she pulls the trigger. She’s 4’10’’ and he’s like 5’11’, and he like.... grabs her gun... like... what was the plan? I want to know. What was the idea behind this? I don’t get it. It’s a character acting recklessly but without the context from previous thread, it feels so odd. Maddy books it, and normally I’d end the thread there, however Violet joins which is ironic. She arrives and she’s like ‘all my friends are dead’, which is also really funny. Anyways, next thread. Let’s go.
Don't Let The Bedbugs Bite is the next thread and it starts with Ericka Bradley. She is one of the finalist, and I do know some people didn’t like, but when I read her for myself like 3 years ago, I found her rather innoffensive ic so, that’s that. After setting up her flashlight as a trap, she goes and hide until someone walks by, and that person happens to be Ericka. I do like that Rocky is coherent with Maddy: she is still cynical from her failed attempts at finding her friend and Anna, but she is still a human being who feels bad about killing someone. What I don’t like is how she says she was defending herself when Trent tried to grapple with her and was antagonizing her. It’s like... she was just trying to find her friend and Trent decided to be an asshole and fight with Maddy, she wasn’t wrong to shoot him. Anyways, she gets to the residential area, and she finds the flashlight. Maddy feels pretty guilty, considering dying ish. It’s hard to explain; she doesn’t want to die but she doesn’t feel like she deserve to live. So yeah that’s her state of mind when Ericka decides to shoot at her. However, she misses and Ericka is like ‘fuck? Fuck!’ so she starts running and Madeleine being like... the only sane man left is like ‘I don’t want to fight you guys, yikes.’ The two girls size each other and they realize they both want the other dead, however they also don’t want to risk fighting each other. So they make a truce, which is not stupid, Maddy wants to survive despite feeling guilty. She also doesn’t want to cause unnecessary death, you might argue that like shooting Ericka wasn’t unnecessary, but coming from Madeleine who feels really guilty about Trent and feeling like it wasn’t self-defence, you can see why she doesn’t want to kill Ericka. It ends with both of them booking it.

Wandering Minds is her 13th island thread, and she is nearing the end of her life. Just saying. It’s a small thread that doesn’t have much thing happening in it, so I don’t think I’ll go into much details other for like what’s the plot. After running away from Ericka, she wanders the residential area and falls asleep. I assume she sleeps the night then wakes up and she’s like ‘shit, I could sleep inside of a house’ and she finds one, hoping to stay there until the game ends.

Thread 14 starts with our favorite con man, Arron Hughes, in Whistling in The Dark. So this guy is scum, like.... Toben’s level of scummy, and Toben is handling him so, you know that’s something. It’s an interesting thread because both Aaron and Madeleine are kinda done with trying to be nice to people, but still know they can earn things out of others despite the risk. Aaron tries to manipulate Madeleine into staying with him, probably so that he can rob her and then murder her or something. Honestly, run Madeleine. Not much happens but it’s still a fun thread because you get to see a) Aaron being a conman b) Madeleine not being totally gullible and c) the two of them interacting. Do I like Madeleine here? Yeah, is it her best thread? No. I don’t like her exit post because I feel like Rocky got lazy and went t-t-time t-t-to s-ss-tut-tter and im like.................. you can do better, I’ve seen you do better.

The fifteen thread is an inactivity death of Violet in Friends Departed. I don’t like the thread. It’s.... an inactivity death handled by staff and pretty those from V4 are rarely like....... good. Not that they are bad, they do their job well, but not always and this one, is that case when it’s not good. However, this isn’t the ‘fault’ (lack better word) of staff, it’s more on Rocky’s. So this is supposed to be Madeleine’s climax, kinda. Like, her goal is literally in sight and she’s like ‘omg i found my friend’. Obviously Violet is not too happy about her boyfriend or something dying. Which is understandable, but Madeleine isn’t helping her case. Like I wrote previously, her killing Trent was justified and self-defence. He basically put his hands on her and like what would you expect? Not to get shot, which Madeleine is being confronted by Violet she’s like ‘I have no excuses’. We’ve been over that Madeleine. I wish I could enjoy this thread but I don’t so. Yeah. What I do like is the fact Madeleine actually has emotions other than being shy and meek, and she actually gets mad. Like, that was a surprise, why didn’t you do that earlier? Having Rocky!Madeleine being more interactive (lack the better word again) would have made her much more interesting, if she were just a tiny bit more aggressive she might have stuck in people’s mind more.
Her final destination is We Need To Stop Meeting Like This. It’s another Ericka thread, and it’s another thread I feel boring. It’s not a bad thread but when it comes to like final ten, or around that number, you’d expect kinda more from the people who are still around. What I do enjoy is that it’s a gunfight that’s really messy. Both Madeleine and Ericka are playing a cat-and-mouse game, swapping roles several times, until Madeleine gets fatally injured. It’s about it for what I like. What I don’t like is that Madeleine, who all game was a rather careful character, suddenly chase Ericka then goes ‘oh wait haha my gun el o el its empty’ while she had another gun (Ericka’s on hand) then gets shot. It’s like. I’ve seen you do better, you can be better than this, we all believe in you Madeleine. I really disliked how she breaks character to go stand in the middle of the dock to give an easy kill to Ericka. Anyways, I liked the part where she wasn’t dumb.
Rocky!Madeleine review: She’s fine. Like, not the best, and she was better when she was handled by Blast. I wish I could honestly say more things about her in a positive or negative way, but I took a long break so it’s jumbled in my mind. I do enjoy some of the things Rocky has done with Madeleine, but that last thread with the out of character actions really broke it for me. Both thread with Ericka, she was at her weakest, in my opinion. Anyways. Next.
Final thoughts: I’d love to see her in ScTres because I feel she would be one of the character with the highest potential if Blast handled her again. In V4, she isn’t a good or bad character, on the quality levels, after being adopted Rocky. It simply feels he didn’t really care about the essence of the character and all the things aobut her, but he did do fun things with her so I can’t blame him for that. Blast!Maddy was at her strongest and I do believe that, if someone wants to have an insight on how v4 looks, both the highs and lows, I’d recommend her.

[Cactus]

Thank you kindly for your writeups, Blast and Lore.

Here are two more.

Blastinus: Ericka Bradley
Melusine: Janet Claymont

[Maraoone]

Done with Marybeth.

[+] marybeth

I think I'll be a bit short with this one. Marybeth is a character that is fun to interact with, but not fun to read.

I'll lump together discussion of her pregame and on-island time. The thing is, a character like Marybeth, a character that does the same things Marybeth does could work. Like, it is sensational to see someone literally push another person into a fight, egging people on to conflict. Where she shines is Woods of Paranoia, her second island thread, because this is where she is most consequential. She literally pushes Francine Moreau into a scuffle involving three other people, which indirectly leads to her death via flare gun. She adds another degree of tension to this thread, and to the previous thread, Resolve, to a lesser extent, through her chaotic evil actions. I'd love to see a character like Marybeth whose motivations are fully explored, where we get to find out exactly why she's so eager for a story, why she literally writes fan-fic of her classmates. It's entertaining to talk about, fun to hear about, but it's not fun to read because Marybeth is a very one-note character. All she ever does is intensify conflict, try to get the tea for no reason other than to get the tea. The writing is technically sound, but we're never provided any reason. She's just a gossip, that's it.

Her death is sadly a placeholder, and it's done even more disservice by the fact that it's the sex death. She's treated as a footnote to Clio and Maxwell's love scene.

My main takeaway from this is that Marybeth would be a good Second Chances character. Like, there's potential in a character so deeply invested in viewing the world as a spectacle, there's a lot of interesting motivations that would be nice to examine, to explore. But that never shows up. She's just a gossip. I think she's a D+-tier character, in my opinion? Not horrible, so to speak. Again, the writing's technically sound, and it's somewhat funny (in a good way) to read a character like her. But yeah, not much to her below the surface.

I'll hold off on getting another character for now.

[blastinus]

Alright, so...Ericka Bradley. One of the finalists of this game, and I've never heard of her before. Seems like very few people talk about her, which may indicate that her story is a bit more middling than others. I guess we'll see, won't we?

Spoiler!

First off, her profile is basically reiterating the same two points: she likes to read, and she likes classical music. There's some part about her being an introvert at the end, but that almost feels like an afterthought, since it doesn't inform any of the choices she made in the rest of her profile. Also, her advantage is that being introverted makes her stealthy? I'm not sure that's how it works at all.

Still, she has two pregame threads to flesh her out in, so here's hoping.

The first one does actually pique my interest right away, since Ericka is working as an assistant in the school library. She catches a guy yelling his head off as the security scanner buzzes at him, and she acts authoritative but a bit hesitant. The fact that the library has three whole people in it is apparently a daunting task, as she says:

"Oh my... so many people. Am... am I the only one in charge here?" she thought out loud "How will I deal wit all this?"

So basically, if you want a picture of how Ericka talks, just add a few ellipses everywhere. I took the same approach when writing my shy artist girl, so I don't suppose I can really judge. Not that it really matters, because that's all there is in this scene, as we move right along to a meatier thread where she asks in a super shy way if she can join some folks for lunch. Now, it's been mentioned that Ericka is an introvert, which apparently in this handler's reckoning means that she's shy and faltering in her voice, but that's not what being an introvert means at all. It means that you're just more comfortable either being alone or in a small setting with a few close friends.

Anyway, her contribution to this conversation is asking people if they're going on the school trip. In fact, she has so little to say, she starts fantasizing about random stuff instead. She gets someone a water bottle and...scene. Nothing really was learned about Ericka and she didn't put herself out there at any point. Groovy.

So it's island time, I guess. Ericka's profile mentioned that her father tried to give her some survival training because of how dangerous the world was getting, and she laments here that she didn't really pay attention to it, staining the pages of her firearm instruction booklet with her tears. She has a handgun called the CZ-99, apparently designed for the Yugoslavian military, and she immediately starts waving it around at noises in the bushes. She shouts at a couple kids that she doesn't trust them, that she'll shoot them, and wouldn't you know it, that doesn't put them at ease. A conflict breaks out between the three of them, and she has to flee while firing behind her.

Next thread, she comes across Frankie Watson, who apparently had an obsessive crush on her that she didn't reciprocate. She's instinctively untrusting as Frankie approaches her, but she outwardly tries to put a friendly face on. Interesting, that's two parallels with my own character. Naturally, considering her boring characterization pre-island, she's quite confused when Frankie starts accusing her of some truly outlandish things. She tries to figure out what's wrong, maybe see if she can negotatiate with him, and it's only after he throws a knife at her that she actually fires back at him. What follows is an interesting kill where Frankie pins her to the ground and she stabs him repeatedly with his own knife. It's a really exhilarating scene and a great kicking-off point for this character.

Unlike my own character, she isn't really choked up about an act of self-defense, especially since this guy was basically forcing himself onto her. As a result, when she's confronted by an SMG-wielding Lucas Bradley, she describes what happened in a matter-of-fact way, albeit with her usual faltering style. She's even got the guts to draw on him when he's already got her covered with his own gun. If he wasn't being controlled by SOTF_Help, the inactive grim reaper, that would be quite the eyebrow-raising move, but fortunately, Peter Siu's got her back, threatening Lucas with a sword. Ericka seems like she's about to duck back into the treeline since she's clearly scared and just wants to get out of there, but then something really weird happens:

1) She stops retreating and just leans against a tree.

2) Her voice suddenly loses all the stuttering and pausing as she delivers an unusually snide monologue about announcements.

3) She straight-up shoots a guy.

Compared to her first kill, where she tried all efforts to make Frankie back down, this seems like a bizarre 180. Peter ultimately lands the finishing blow on Lucas, denying Ericka the kill, but I want to know what the heck happened there. Was the lure of snagging an inactive kill just that strong that she basically broke all the rules that we'd established about her up until then?

Oh yeah, and she doubles back to grab a gun holster from a random corpse, but who cares in the long run about that?

Whatever spell took hold of her, she's back into stuttery librarian mode for the next thread, where she suddenly has an emotional breakdown about how everyone's trying to kill her. Or maybe she's just pretending. Hard to tell. But it's enough to convince Autumn O'Leary, true or not, so I guess it worked. Nonetheless, I'm a bit confused over where Ericka is right now, especially since she's suddenly super irritable and impatient next thread, going so far as to fire her gun into the beach because she's tired of three people trying to give her a friendly chat. But hey, maybe they could resolve this peacefully still. After all, one kid just strides stage left.

Except there's a problem: Jamie Li just got taken over by SOTF_Help, so that means it's time to escalate.

First off, Ricky Fortino tries the sensible thing and tells her to put the gun down. She takes that as a provocation and tries to fire, only to realize that she's out of bullets. Ricky doesn't take it well, and the two of them get in a fracas, with Ericka eventually wriggling free and going for the knife instead...which somehow results in her skipping Ricky entirely and going for Jamie...okay, you know what, this is really stupid. Ricky just apparently dematerializes with no explanation and Jamie gives no effort to defend herself. This kill is terrible, just straight-up terrible. If the character hadn't been another casualty of the SOTF_Help cull, their handler would have had legitimate cause to complain about how lame that was.

Moving on, she comes to a confrontation where people are shooting and stabbing and swinging at one another, and she decides to stay back and just observe. Finding an opening in the confrontation, she takes careful aim and blasts one of the participants, feeling pretty proud of herself for landing a one-hit kill, but that fades quickly when more people file in with guns of their own, some of which are pointed at her. Not willing to try her chances, she goes for diplomacy. Well, I say diplomacy, but consider the giant fight that happened and then examine the following statement:

"Okay. Please let me say some things before I even consider putting down my bag and weapon. First of all, a lot of people seem to be moving through this exact location, many of them armed, and if one of them is hostile and I've done what you asked I'll be killed! Second, the last two people I saw pointing guns at each other were the dead girl near the sobbing girl and the dead girl that had the machine gun somewhere near you. Needless to say, that didn't work out so well for them."

She let out a deep sigh, trying to keep herself calm, "What I'm trying to say is that I don't want to die, and I'm afraid that's what will happen if I put this gun down, and I know that will happen if we keep pointing these at each other. We can continue to talk without disarming ourselves or opening fire.... Please."

So she's not putting her gun down, and she somehow thinks that will put people at ease. Well, it doesn't, and she's still being confrontational and dismissive, and the group disperses without any possibility of reconciliation. So she immediately loots all the dead bodies around the area and reflects on how fortunate she is that they didn't take any of the good stuff.

Yup, I don't like Ericka. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt before, but this is the point where I lose all respect for her. She's not even fun as a villain, since she's whiny and self-centered all the time.

Well whatever, we've still got eight threads of this stuff to read. We pick up right after the rescue, and she's already aware that she's not going to be invited onto the boat, so she cries about how "unfair" it all is and drifts off to sleep before being woken by Josee Trembley, who just wants to make polite conversation, so she blows her off and walks off on her own. If the girl was controlled by SOTF_Help, Ericka'd have probably shot at her too. Lending credence to my theory, when she comes across someone standing next to a hole in the very next thread, her immediate thought is to shove the person in, which she does.

Charming.

Two down, let's keep going. She sets up an ambush spot in the town center for when someone walks by, she misses, she panics, and when the person she confronts calls her out on it, she claims that she doesn't want to fight. Riiiiight. The next thread is just a oneshot where she checks her bag and yup, everything's in order. No seriously, it's only four lines long. No self-reflection, nothing new learned.

Flip switched, and next thread she's turned from Killer Mode to Shy Mode again because she meets someone who she actually cares about. Doesn't last though, since she's immediately standoffish the second someone calls her out on her murders, so she ends up pulling a gun on Josee Trembley and acting like it's some great herculean decision that she's making. She even grants Josee some closure by answering some questions she was curious about before pulling the trigger. It's an effective and emotional scene and I'd feel a lot better about it if it wasn't also completely out of character considering everything that happened before.

Matter of fact, in the very next thread, she's looking for someone to ambush, but she can't find anyone, so she gives up. No lessons learned, I guess. Then comes her final kill, and it's on one of my kids. Well, technicaly not my kid at this point, but hey, who's counting? It is interesting because these characters both started out as shy girl caricatures and went in different directions. What's more interesting is that this is the first kill where Ericka has actually had to put in any kind of an effort. She and Madeleine Smith end up wrestling over control of each other's guns and Maddy ends up pulling one that's unloaded from Ericka. You'd think this'd be some kind of cool checkmate-type move, but as Melusine pointed out in her critique of Madeleine, she has her own gun right there that she can fall back on, so yeah, it feels like Madeleine just kind of gives up.

And so, as endgame comes upon us, it occurs to me that Ericka is not credited with any more kills. That's not a good sign.

Sure enough, she doesn't even interact with anyone else in endgame, as she just fumbles around looking for a hiding place and gets shot in the back. We don't get any final reflections, any regrets, any closure. She just dies as quickly and as anticlimactically as she killed. Comparing this to how the V1 endgame folks met their respective ends, this feels like a giant copout, like Ericka didn't deserve to be there and they were just shuffling her out of the way. And honestly, I have to agree. Ericka had a sizable rap sheet to her name, but two of those were inactive kills and only one had any emotional weight to it. She hadn't learned anything, hadn't grown, hadn't sacrificed or suffered or...anything! Not to sound bitter or anything, but the people who became inactive and she killed so blithely would have been more interesting contenders than she was.

Final conclusion: Read "Failing to Reappear". That's the thread where Josee dies. Also read the endgame thread, but mostly to see where she ends up. Otherwise, there's not much that I would recommend.

May I have another, please?

[Cactus]

Another one, comin' right up.

Blastinus: Feo Smith

[Skraal]

V4 was great, I'll take a kid!