Survival Of The Fittest

[Original critique by Jilly]

All right, so let's talk about Danesfort Zygmunt. His original handler, BadWolfWho, only made 9 posts with him before being handed off to Solitair for another 10, so being such a short-lived character is either a blessing for not being really involved in V3 proper or a curse for not being active enough. Probably somewhere in between, but let's go for it. I'm not the greatest at giving feedback, but I'll give my lame opinions as I read through the legacy of Dane.

[+] Profile

I'm willing to say that Dane's profile is pretty okay by pre-V4 standards, there's some eyebrow raising stuff but if there was a lot more detail I think it could be justified. Details like his exact height and weight would be a good start, but we just have qualitative details so we just gotta work with what we've got when trying to picture Dane when he does stuff.

The core of Dane's character history is related to a boating accident that resulted in the death of his mother, and his dad becomes a Sad Dad™ and moves himself and Dane to America to escape that past... which kind of doesn't make sense to me, but we also have no clue what his father does for a living other than that he becomes a workaholic. This is probably the most "thinking emoji" part of his profile, but again if there were more detail on how the accident affected Dane or even something like more exposition on his relationship with his parents it wouldn't feel so much like the accident is the one defining trait about Dane with like 90% of the rest of the profile being just fluff.

Dane is a bit of a renaissance man with athletic, artistic, and humanitarian pursuits; again, this is fine, but it feels like throwaway interests when only one sentence is devoted to each hobby, if the hobby even has a sentence to talk about why it's relevant to Dane in the first place.

I guess the biggest thing is that, after reading the profile, I don't really feel like I have a good idea of what to expect from Dane as a person. The last paragraph talks about how he keeps to himself and is hard to warm up to but then mentions his good sense of humor, which is a vibe I would not have gotten unless it was directly mentioned. But this is what the profile says, so it's what I'm going to have to assume he will be like come V3.

tl;dr Details make the world go round and lead to a better and happier character profile for a young adult who's gonna die soon anyway.

[+] Pregame

N/A (rip)

[+] Game

First off: For the love of God please fix your damn thread links when your character comes in or out of a scene or I will come for you myself.

*ahem*

Since there's two handlers responsible for Dane I'm going to give my opinions in both the BadWolf era and the Solitair era.

[+] Badwolf

I want to like Dane, I really do. Mostly because in any group situation I know I'm always the pessimistic "I don't know about this plan, guys" kind of guy too so I can kind of relate. He has some good inner dialogue that made me chuckle (which I hope was intentional). However, Dane's biggest problem, in my opinion, is that he just kind of "exists", and stuff happens near him rather than stuff happening to him. Being a support character isn't necessarily a bad thing, but at the same time Dane's internal monologue is usually so dry and barren that he's just not a very compelling read; I'm more interested in the overall arc with the SADD escape group that Dane's a part of rather than wanting to read more of Dane's posts, if that makes sense. No scenes would change if Dane wasn't around; he's wallpaper, which really sucks because I really do want to like him. I can tell he's good boy with his interactions with Dennis and Dominica, so it's unfortunate that Dane doesn't really have much of a push to stick with his story.

This isn't entirely BadWolf's fault, though. In Dane's first thread the only plot-relevant thing that happens is that he meets up with Dennis, Reg, and Dorian and moves over to the Lookout Tower with Dennis and Dorian, and that's about it. And then in the second thread where the SADD escape group comes into play Dane is completely pushed into the background by the stronger personalities like Neil and Dominica (also as a side note I really, really don't believe that the terrorists wouldn't have just instated capital punishment for intentionally destroying cameras from the beginning, let alone destroying multiple like SADD does in A View to a Kill. I know the punishment is delayed and given in the next day's announcements, but still I don't believe the terrorists wouldn't just kill the perpetrators then and there. Early SOTF is weird.) And then Sound and Fury is just a chaotic hot mess – also not Dane's fault as a character. Maybe if Dane had more activity going on in the threads he's in, or if he didn't get sucked into the SADD vortex he would have had a chance to really shine but as it stands I wouldn't recommend him other than being an outsider perspective to part of the SADD plotline.

[+] Solitair

Solitair takes over at the end of the very thrilling ride that is Sound and Fury. I think I like the original interpretation of Dane better in comparison, but something I do like about Solitair's version is that his posts have a lot more internal dialogue to them. He visibly starts breaking from the first thread, and when he emerges in Kimmy, Kimmy, Candy Eater he's pretty banged up while searching for Dennis, now his only real motivation to keep fighting.

...But again, Dane is still pretty much wallpaper where nothing would change in most of the threads he joins if he wasn't there. The first and only time he has a real impact is in his death thread Death and All His Friends. Dane is a lot more impulsive and, frankly, stupid, possibly from change in handler or possibly from being delirious because of sleep deprivation and blood loss from getting caught in a bear trap earlier. At least his death is kinda metal; getting sliced by an axe and shot at the same time sure is a way to go.

Overall I wouldn't recommend Dane himself as a kid to read, only because he both doesn't really do much until his death thread and he just doesn't have a lot of interesting internal dialogue going on. If you want a shortcut to part of the SADD saga though, Dane's your guy.

New child, s'il vous plaît!

[Original critique by Kermit]

Emmanuelleanelle Babineaueauauex

she is vv good

profile wrote:Emmaneulle Babineaux is a very ?????? name.

dammit the profile beat me to that joke >:C

haha mimi's old. wrote: She knew enough to tell her Mimi [Grandma] thank you, that she loved her, and that, really, she couldn't eat another bite of her dinner. What really interested Emma was photography.

Kermitlaughs at mimi for being a grandma

Emma tries to become a photographer but she's bad at being a photographer so she starts modeling for her friends. Eventually she also starts posing NEKKID for the fine arts students at the local university (THIS BECOMES IMPORTANT LATER ON) and I guess that's ok because she's 18. Also she's on a volleyball team that got to go to ?????? last year (THIS ALSO BECOMES IMPORTANT LATER ON).

Oh, she likes knitting too.


? ⋆ ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ❢ ¿ ? ? ⋆ ?

Emma wakes up and she's like "??????" because idk but she doesn't know what's going on. Maxie appears and says "Ai. Friend or foe, and all that crap," and now I can't help but imagine her being very, very Scottish. Emma's like "???????AlsoWhyDoYouHaveAMeatHook????????" and Maxie's like "Bitch we're in SOTF :c" and Emma's like ";~; also do you know anything about swordfighting?". Oh hey one of my three fathers is here now and he's writing some guy named "John" who even is this "John" guy wow.

who names their kid John anyways wrote: "Well you see," Riz said he as walk calmly toward the two girls,"Its really a matter of knowing your opponent. Knowing when to thrust, and when to pull back," John smirked at his own analogy, "Unless of course you're talking about the other type of sword fighting my dear, which I think my dear you'd best look up on the internet since I won't be doing any demonstrations of that."

yes
YES
Y E S
? ? ?
?? ץ ᗴ ᔕ ??
? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ?
ʏ ᴇ ꜱ
S Ǝ ⅄
Y⃣ E⃣ S⃣
Y⃞    E⃞    S⃞
Ꙅ Ǝ Y
? ? ?
Y ₑ ₛ
ʸ ᴱ ˢ
Ⓨ Ⓔ Ⓢ
ץ є ร
『Y』 『E』 『S』
≋Y≋ ≋E≋ ≋S≋
░Y░ ░E░ ░S░
(っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ Y E S ♥
˜"*°•.˜"*°• Y E S •°*"˜.•°*"˜
[̲̅Y] [̲̅E] [̲̅S]
Y҉ ҉E҉ ҉S҉

JoHn!?!?!?!?! wrote: "Now on to more pressing matters, the pressing matter being, a good reason why I shouldn't be pressing the pointy end of my beat stick here into either one of your skulls? Get it? Pressing! Whoo damn I'm on a roll!"

wow im riz!?

maxie and riz are like "*menacingly threatens/makes sexual euphemisms at the other party*" and emma's like ": ) what is going on" and then ATTACKS MAXIE OHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOO! Emma's like "oh that was a dumb thing to do whoops" and Maxie's like ">:C" and runs away. Riz/Emma hang out for a bit and then a bunch of people show up, scream at them, and leave in the same post (it happens twice!!!!!!!!) and then rizemma leave.




And then kermit got distracted by v2 for a few months, as is tradition.



HOoOOOWwWWWdDDDDYyYyYY FOOOoOOoLLLLKKKKKKSKS IIIIIiiiI'MmMMmM BAaAaACcCCCKKkKKK!! ! ! ! !


ok time to go to Sound and Fury Part two: Sound Louder and Fury Angrier! Rizemma are at the church now! Riz stares at some dead people because it's fun! Emma ponders the existence of God and then sees a dead Adonis person and starts crying. Emma is normal! ! !

Emma: "There is no God here."

ACCURATE

EWwWW IiIIt's JaMEs WOw and also morgan and James the character. Morgan walks into some tree branches and then JaAaAMmMES bashes her into a tree a couple of times. JAaaAAAaMmMEMEsS is like "whoops my bad" and they hug and everything's ok (d'awwwwwwwww). jAAmMEEs uses his super James-senses to notice the door of the church is open, so he's like "Morgan go away" and Morgan's like "k" and JamAMEs is like "henloooo~~"

Neil's here now too ARGH WHY IS EVERYONE JOINING IT REALLY IS SOUND AND FURY PART TWO AAAAAAAAEIEEEEEEEEEEEEE

anyways SADD's here and they're like "blahblahblahblah" and none of it really relates to Emma SO IM SKIPPING IT EHEHEHHEHEEHHEHE

Riz is like "Emma… I might need your help to…. ‘subdue' James, if you know what I mean. *LICKS LIPS SEDUCTIVELY*. SADD does more stuff and Riz is like "ACTUALLY NEVERMIND FUCK YOU JAMES I'M LEAVING AAAAAAAAWWW YEAAAAAAAAAAAAH" and James and Morgan are like "wat" and Emma realizes Riz is more attracted to Adonis' corpse than to her. Then she leaves. NEXT THREAD WAAAAAAAAAAHOOOOOO



Emma's been separated from Riz, and in the meantime, Riz has found a Mimi. Riz then throws Mimi off a cliff haha.



YeS I Am UpPSEt

Emma is also upset! She's hiding in the bushes and hears Mimi hit the ground like a sack ‘o potatoes haehEhhEH.

Riz is like "*MOANS OF PLEASURE*" and then HE SEES EMMA OH NO and he's like "oh fuck how much of that did you see?" and Emma's like "EnOuGh! ! !" and then she pulls out her sword and is like "DoONT cOmE AnNY CloOSEr!" and Riz is like "[VILLAIN MONOLOGUE]" AND A FIGHT SCENE OAUEAUEHAEH

Riz gets distracted for a moment though and kicks an inactive off a cliff whoops! Riz is like "MEMES" and some Noah guy sneaks up and is like "oh ugh its riz grody" and Emma runs away from Riz and bonks right into Noah! Ouch! Riz is like "WHERE EMMA GO!?!@?!??!?!?! >:O" and then he leaves. OH WAIT I FORGOT EMMA'S BAG SPILLED AND RIZ FOUND ONE OF HER TAMPONS EEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

ok now that that's over Noah's like "hi im noah" and Emma's like "*goes inactive*" and Noah's like "ok bye" and he leaves. Emma also leaves!


NEXT THREAD !

oh fuck it you don't need to listen to me scream anymore I'LL JUST DO THE CONCLUSION HAAHHAHAHAH

(I've read Emma like a bunch so I'm an expert in this ok also Emma gets adopted which is important)



CONCLUSION: Emma pre-adoption is okay. She's not really anything special, but she's not bad or anything. She kind of exists to be weirded out by Riz and that's about it.

HOWEVER, Emma post-adoption is like honestly so good you don't even understand ok. She becomes this like, really nuanced character with this sad backstory that is slowly revealed to the reader, but in a way that actually works. She spends a lot of her time with one of V3's other unsung heroes (BLESSED SHAMEECA) too, so that's a plus. When I finished reading her (without giving too much away), at first I was like "well ok", but the impact of her story hit me like a freight train a few minutes later. It's just… OK SHE'S JUST REALLY GOOD GO READ HER BLAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGH

[Original critique by Kermit]

I keep getting Kathy Holden and Becky Holt mixed up + I'm pretty sure they spend their whole games together so fun times for me!

Kathy looks like a normal person and acts like a normal person but she also does fencing which is kinda >_> and seems like it's just been thrown in to give her an advantage but I can forgive it because the rest of her profile is normal and ok.

oh god

vomits

BLEAHRAHRJHJAHJRJGHAEAEGRHG



I'm glad old Danya is dead.

ISLAND:

lessssgo woahwwo

OK so Kathy starts with a flashback to some land developer guy being like "this is my land" and her going "no it's my land" and then him going "no it's my land" and then her going "no it's my land" and so on.

lol wrote: "That's for the court to decide in a few months, Mr. Astle. And if you call me cutie again, I'll have you nailed for sexual harrasment as well, and I'm pretty sure that won't go down well when we present our case to the court."

actually im pretty sure threatening to nail someone is also sexual harassment [insert sitcom laughtrack here]

Wow it was a dream all along PSYCHE BRO. Kathy wakes up and is like "oh im in a cave" (also the narrative explains her late appearance in the standard v3 way which is kinda ok i guess).


OH WoW eEWwWW ItS MImMI GrosS She'S So OLd NOoOOOoO

Kathy baps japanese mimi (I'm calling every mimi character mimi U CANT STOP ME) on the noggin with her umbrella and Becky's here now and japanese mimi is like "Argh!"

MarnBeckKath-y talk for a bit and - Oh heck I forgot to call Marnie Mimi oh well - and Japanese Mimi let's it split that Dante Cooper's been following her around, and Kathy's like "ew gross". Dante's like "where mimi go" and Ryan Atwell stumbles in and is like "where becky go" and some more stuff happens for a while and then Beckathy leave.

NEXTTHREAD

So apparently Becky's witnessed a murder now? Oh fuck I called Kathy Becky GOD DAMNIT AAAAEU-


ok so anyways yeah she saw Riz throw Blonde Mimi off a cliff (wow I also saw that) and is like "screams" because apparently she doesn't like watching people die huh what a weirdo. Kathy's like "BEEEEEECCKKKKKKKKKKKYYYYYY" and Becky's like "KAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY" and then Adam Reeves is like "I'm a one-dimensional character and am shooting at Becky and Kathy" and Beckathy leave.



NEXT THREAD!

Becky and Kathy are like "HEhHEHHEHEheHEHEH WOW TEEHEE" and get into a jokey argument that escalates to jokey pushing and then KATHY PUSHES BECKY INTO A BEAR TRAP OHHH NOOOOOO and Becky's like "ouch I'm dead" and Kathy's like "oh fuck :C".

ADAM REEVES IS HERE OH NOOOOOOO! Becky's gone cray-cray and is hallucinating that she's getting executed and then Reeves explodes her to death THE END!

Oh hell I called her Becky again. :-C



Conclusion: Uh well Kathy existed I guess. She had a story ‘n stuff so that's a plus but she also kinda boring. She was ok but idk if I'd really recommend her.


EDIT: this review is bad and its author should feel bad (;~;) Kathy's actually pretty good u should read her if u want.

[Original critique by Cactus]

Hello, Mr. Sanders... or should I say... Colonel!?

No? Darn. Can't blame a guy for hoping.


His name sounds familiar, and I don't quite recall why, so why don't we jump in and find out why. I've been assured that this will be a more enjoyable experience than Carson.

[+] Dorian Sanders

Profile:

The appearance is well-done and it's probably about ¾ of what we'd expect today, which is great. A little light in the clothing area, but I get an idea of what he looks like. I really like the parts about his posture and the muscle spasm tidbit is neat.

On to the bio, Dorian seems to be a pretty normal kid from the get-go, which is nice. This profile's pretty good, were I a staff member today, I'd probably want a bit more explanation of the "emotional and physical distress" that boarding school caused him. Were I a staff member in V3, I probably would have slapped his profile with an approved sticker so quickly that his head would spin.

*checks*

That is indeed what happened, Megami one-shot approved him. Heh.

Anyhow, I also enjoy the factoid where his father's a playwright and he has a cat named Stoppard. That's a neat little tidbit too. Anyway, he's a pretty average kid with a bit of a temper who tends to focus on the small problems rather than glossing over them in favour of the big picture. This is easily a profile that staff today could critique once or twice and then approve without much problem. Promising start!

Pregame:

Oh no you di'int! That's good.

Game:

Long Road to Ruin. Shit. That's a Foo Fighters song... which can only mean...

As one of my rotating forum avatars is currently the Kermit wanted poster, I feel a degree of sadness when I see that silly time criminal on a v3 thread. It's no secret that I'm not super thrilled with my v3 work, but when I then see that this is the Marsh thread, my spirits rise a bit - this one was actually pretty good. So let's scroll past the almighty Dodd and find Mr. Sanders.

((Continued from Stalwart - and I'm playing Bill because Oliver's away and he's my damn brother, so I own him))
For the record... nobody owns Oliver. He's way too stubborn to be property.

Dorian enters the thread pretty much at the beginning, and like many mid-game starters, mention is made of him not finding anyone over his first four days in SOTF. He's a lucky sort, and he's been searching for ways to escape, but finding nothing. He makes note of how crappy the marsh smells, which is a nice detail. Dorian's thinking about his cat when he steps on what ends up being the corpse of Anna Vaan. He kind of shakes this off, which I don't love but I can move past since he's apparently been walking about for four days, as per the V3-era dropping in of kids mid-game. As he moves away from the grisly discovery, he makes another discovery - the group of Izzy Cheung, Bill Ritch, and Korazon-era Adam Dodd.

At this point he muses on what to do about the Dodd situation, deciding that trying to approach them is the best bet. Opening his mouth, he screams an introduction at them that's a little rambly, but I think fits his character so far.

Bill Ritch, being a friendly sort, yells right back at him, which causes Dodd to pull Bill down and violently silence him. Dodd pretty much tells him to go and die in a fire, because, and I quote:

"Shut the fuck up, and listen to me! I'm not running a fucking charity here, and I've used up all of my good deads for today!

I'm sort of amused by "good deads". Nice typo, 2008 me. Also - what a dick.[

Before Dorian has a chance to retort to Dodd's really jerky demand, Julie Mikan saunters into the swamp and opens fire on her former ally with her machine gun. Well, that escalated quickly. Dorian shows back up and takes a second to get mad at Dodd's talking down to him and calling him a charity case, when the announcement comes on. He marvels at the number of people killing each other but then catches up to the Julie Mikan gunfire, continuing to blame Dodd for all of his problems.

Once a whole bunch of people take bullets, Dorian crawled into a mouldy little house and realizes that he took a shot in the shin, grazing him and causing him to feel the burning pain of a small gash. I like the detail that gets put into the wound - it's not a massive injury but it's enough that he needs to stop and take care of it, and he observes the yelling outside with an appropriate amount of vitriol. So far, Dorian is very consistent with his characterization and I'm liking that about him.

As some other business goes on with the Dodd-trio outside, Dorian talks to himself a little but and makes reference to "pulling a Danny Archer", which I don't know what that means. He notices that Julie is laying unconscious, half in and out of the water, and goes over, collects her submachine gun and tries waking her up to interrogate her. Julie awakens and is basically all "I don't care much about anything", which Dorian isn't having any of, and he puts on a tough guy veneer to basically try and get information out of her.

It's at this point that I'm starting to notice that he references an awful lot of pop culture in his thoughts and feelings, which I'm torn on. Some of these references, I don't get, so they don't land to me. I'm not sure if this is because of dating (it's 2008 here, currently it's 2018 - oh sweet Jesus, that was ten years ago) but it's a little confusing.

Julie admits to her name, to deciding to play the game, and has basically bought in to her own rationale that she wants to eliminate any and all groups. She closes off her response to Dorian by insulting his intelligence, which goes over SUPER WELL with Dorian.

Her responses manage to piss him off more and more, and by the time she insults his intelligence, he goes into full-fledged ranty-monologue mode, which is pretty common for the time. I may or may not have written a character or two who did those.

Dorian wrote: This is a fucking social experiment, nothing more, nothing less! It's Lord of the Flies shit, can't you get that through your dense little bloodlust-addled brain!

I have a V1 OOC notes flashback and am triggered. Goddammit Alan Shinwrath.

Dorian continues his tirade against Julie Mikan, simultaneously cussing her out and telling her that he's a decent person, so he's not going to kill her, or wish death upon her.

And then he wishes death upon her.

What.

I guess if he's going for unbridled rage, it works, but... eh. Anyways, Dorian leaves the thread and I pray that the next ones are a little more concise and easy to follow.

Next thread up is "Slow Chemical", which I immediately know is a Finger Eleven song that used to be the theme song for a WWE wrestler, Kane. Which of course, can only mean that this is a thread with... yep, I'm right. It's Ares! This is a good thing, by the way. Especially since it's a Steve thread. Niiiice.

Dorian arrives on the scene still really pissed off at Julie Mikan for playing, and he's pissed off at Danya for putting them in this situation, and he's piss-

SQUIRREL!

That's basically how the thread goes as he realizes that not only has he arrived at a really picturesque setting with a myriad of varying-coloured flowers and a rainbow, but he's come up with a genius plan to save them all. He wants to get rid of all of the weapons. To me, a grizzled veteran of SOTF, this sounds like a great plan to make sure that you end up dead, but what do I know?

Upon spotting Steve Digaetano sitting on his own, Dorian figures that since he knows him, he can put him at ease by CREEPING UP BEHIND HIM an announcing himself in an admittedly pretty clever manner, gun at the ready and ready to react if Steve goes haywire. Which is directly oppositional from his "let's toss the guns away" plan, and sort of hypocritical. Like, you just blasted Julie for shooting everyone, stole her weapon, and like, you're going to use it?

The gun must be haunted and is possessing people. That has to be it.

Steve isn't having any of Dorian's lighthearted greeting, and he pretty much lays out that he already shot someone and is pretty messed up about it. Dorian does the human thing and tries to empathise with poor Steve-o, and suggests that they team up for his grand plan. He doesn't have a chance to implement his grand plan though, as Viki Valentine shows up.

At this point in the story, this write-up has sat for 2 months without me doing much about it, so I'm going to really summarize the remainder as I'm having a tough time doing a blow-by-blow. Viki shows up and cautiously tries to talk to Steve, and they're surprised by Shawn Waits, who references Tom Waits. I know Chad is back so I'm not going to lay into him as much as I probably would have were he still the demon that we all enjoyed hating and not a relatively reasonable adult now, but that's a little on the nose, eh 2008-Chad?

Tom kind of gives them all a weird spiel, which weirds Steve out to the point where he takes charge and obviously doesn't trust Tom, who's drunk and spouting off. Things escalate, and Tom and Steve eventually have a fight, which leaves to Tom getting shot and then going inactive. Stephanie Evans and some other people show up in the thread, and this is all a complete clusterfuck. Dorian lays out his plan to Steve and the others, around the same time that the Jack O'Connor virus is making Streetfighter sounds, which confuses everyone even more. The gang actually don't hate Dorian's plan, and they're about to talk about how to implement it when inactive-Tom rushes Steve, who shoots and kills him pretty much instantly. This freaks Dorian out, and he decides to peace out, to look for the transmission tower to implement his plan.

I somehow missed that he took Stephanie Evans with him, but they arrive in a thread and are looking around for the transmitter. Dorian doesn't get posted with a ton in this thread, but he's looking around for the transmitting devices and is slowly losing faith in himself as he does so. As he has no luck and starts freaking out a bit, him and Stephanie get in an argument about his plan, which eventually leads to her walking off on him, which saddens him but just steels his resolve. It's actually kind of sad, because obviously there's no such thing but he doesn't know that.

Dorian shows up at the cliffside, and is kind of lost in his own thoughts, trying to psych himself up to keep going with his plan when he's interrupted by Jordan Redfield. I don't know if PA goes a little less active at this point, but he then gets lost in a huge rush of posts from other people joining his thread, particularly the remnants of SADD reacting to the "death" of Neil Sinclair. All hell breaks loose, and Quincy starts to betray the group, is then bum-rushed by everyone else who sees him doing it, including Dorian, but Quincy then blows a hole in the midsection of Hannah Rose. Dorian takes him down and kind of monologues at him about the uselessness of playing the game and how they all need to work together, but I buy it because like, this group is in the midst of imploding and it's a tough one for Dorian to accept otherwise.

There's a bit of a back and forth and eventually Quincy runs off and Dorian recruits the remnants of SADD to help him with his transmitter plan. At this point though, he's a step away from a breaking point, and PA conveys this pretty well, I'd say. He's sticking to his plan because he doesn't know what else to do, and he knows that if he doesn't have a goal, he'll probably die. This is all well and good, but then there's another announcement.

And oh would you LOOK at that, Adam Dodd is "dead". While heaps of people probably did an OOC cheer, the kids start to lose their shit, because it pretty much confirms to all of them that nobody's invincible. Mark Tavarian kills Warren Pace as he snaps at this news, and in retaliation, Dorian finally snaps and attacks Mark. Jordan also joins in on the attack and within moments, Mark is dead. This FINALLY pushes poor Dorian over the edge, and he starts to believe that he's a magnet for death. In a somewhat unhinged manner, he freaks out and leaves Jordan behind.

Final thread. Lord have mercy this has been a slog.

Again, gonna summarize. Dorian comes upon the group of Lulu Altaire, Rick Holeman and crew, and Madison Connor comes up and attacks them. Dorian freaks out, dresses down Rick when he attacks Madison, and then attacks her himself. He ends up killing Madison, and is then pretty much immediately shot by Lulu as he stands there in shock.

Okay. So here's the thing about Dorian.

He's actually pretty good. He starts out a little shaky, as Pigeon Army has a tough time finding his voice, but once he finds it, he's actually pretty solid. His first three threads are a bit of a shitshow and I think he gets lost in the shuffle a few times, but his last two are actually really solid and do a nice job showing his mental deterioration.

I would recommend him, but like, with the caveat that it's tough to read him if only because post order wasn't a strictly enforced thing and it seems like a lot of shit just happens all around him. On his own though, Dorian's a nice read and seems to be a handler getting his bearings. Give him a go, he certainly improves and his end is actually pretty nice.

I'm done for now though, no more kids for me; that was too much of a struggle for me and it took months and I sort of crapped out near the end.

[Original critique by Frozen Smoke]

[+] Jordan

So, Jordan is a Megami kid. From my V2 RAT skimming this handler has a very high floor of where there writing sits, so this is probably a nice intro to V3 for me.

Jordan is one of those kids who just starts in the fourth day? fifth day? Damn getting lost in a jungle like that sounds really disconcerting tbh. But hey, he seems relatively sane upon popping out of the jungle, being sad about his friends being dead. He meets another dude, Mortimer, and thinks the dude looks creepy as hell and pegging him as a weirdo. Feels like a decent base choice on murder island so nice job dude, he then just like peaces out and DOESNT LINK THE THREAD HE'S GOING TO.

The next thread is one that just feels inherently weird because it's clearly driven by OOC necessity here. Julia - the new character in this scene's handler - notes in OOC that Megami has the death rights and GM permissions to write off Julia here rather than have to be HELP-ed out.

If she saw anybody, she would probably freak and attack them in a frenzy.
Something like this is a pretty clear indication of a character just being kinda dismissed, I think.

Megami does a good job here with the dialogue to make sure they're not just sending Julia off in a quick, pointless death - trying to put a lot of her on the page to remember her by and impact Jordan with. However, it means we don't quite get a decent look inside either of their heads as this goes down. After getting firmly back into Jordan's PoV however, after Julia attacks him, we get all this back. A nice, detailed description of him being very afraid and unwilling to even fight back, as Julia relentlessly antagonises him. I'm unsure of what Julia's headspace is at here, but that's an OOC thing.

The death is something I'm agnostic on, it's a scene that's played up as an "accidental" kill, but Jordan put a knife against her chest whilst grabbing her in a hug. It feels like a very dumb, spur of the moment thing that just went horribly wrong though, so it feels pretty believable. After this he just grabs his shit and runs (after looting the body of course).

Jordan's actual reflections come in the next thread and they're pretty believable. Lot of trauma, lot of self doubt, not really feeling sure of how he can deal with others now. That kinda shit. He also lowkey thinks about getting friendzoned - Which I had a little laugh at b/c this was 2008 and memes apparently are as old as time, swag.

That was why he was constantly pushed into the 'best friend' role by so many of his female friends.

Oh ok I wrote that before reading down - Turns out The Friendzone(tm) is going to be a thing in Jordan's narrative between him and Alex. I wonder if this will be paid off? At this point I am unsure. Look forwards to finding out though.

He then meets the twins, Lenny and Elizabeth Priestly. Apparently Lenny has been cuttin' some fools up and feeling pretty good about it so this fits with V3's rep of being lightly psychotic at the start of everything.

And uh, wow does Jordan's demeanour change rapidly here. He goes from coward running away from people who might even potentially cut him to straight up chatting with a named multiple killer. It doesn't feel too far away from where he was, maybe he's just stopped panicking because there's only so much worse this can get now? It's not clearly spelled out, so I guess this counts as speculation.

The scene is interesting, with Lenny and Jordan kind of just exchanging views on the game. It feels very weird, but the grudging respect Lenny gives him is a solid boundary from the scene escalating into violence. They leave each other alone and Theseus mentally scars me with a fanfiction rape scene. I'm exaggerating for effect, it just came so hard out of the blue I thought it was just Bad Writing, not Intentionally Bad Writing For Effect.

At this point Yossarian takes over handling Jordan and there's a huge timeskip to Day 8, where Jordan is self aware about how little impact he's had. I really want to know what the hell he's been doing if he's just been avoiding people - His plan now even revolves meeting other people, so clearly he had to have some reason to not just head to the biggest attraction for people. Unfortunately, we don't get this insight.

Yossarian's writing is very different in style and tone to Megami - There's a great deal more run-on sentences and fluidity of punctuation that makes him read as though mentally he's very... Floaty? I don't know how to put it. The dialogue here also feels really stilted, with lines like;

"As for the third question. No. No I didn't met them, in those last 8 days. You are a SADD members, aren't you?".

Feeling like they just haven't been read out loud. I can see argument that maybe 8-ish days of isolation have made him a little unpracticed in social fluency, but he seems to be completely capable of understanding everyone else and acting in a fairly reasonable manner. It feels like Yoss is just trying to find the voice of a character who's not done much to make a statement yet in the game,

Jordan finds himself dealing with Quincy, Warren, Mark & Hannah. I'm not actually super familliar with the SADD storyline, so I suppose the weight of much of this interaction is lost on me. Had Jordan thought about SADD before I feel the conversation hinging on them would have made a bit more sense here, but Quincy throws out a solid recruitment pitch which lays out his group nicely and there's strong tension between him and Nancy over leadership.

Jordan has an amazing reaction internally to this speech, which basically amounts to how I think a lot of people would think of escapes. To quote once directly;

There was no way to do it, Jordan knew it, and (probably) so do Quincy. After all, how to trick a guy, who is watching your every step, and can react with pushing 'Instant Kill' button

I approve of this logically reductive summation, as it feels very realistic as a thought process and gives me a solid summation of why Jordan wouldn't join an escape route - It's as sure a suicide as anything else.

He then decides to wholeheartedly Fake-Join SADD. Nice. I like the cut of this guys giblets.

This gives an interesting swerve to this escape group, with two fakers and 3 non-fake believers in SADD. Basically proto-Mafia, except the Mafia doesn't care about other Mafia members. The scene ends with a fairly cool callback! Jordan finds the body of Mortimer, and is horrified to see not only dead bodies, but also someone he's seen walking around and alive and non-murdery for a bit. It's a nice reason to get everyone moving and helps keep Jordan feeling relatively normal.

Another GM-y dialogue only scene here. I don't "hate" these, especially for scenes that are supposed to be emotionally detached or intimate, when you can inherently trust the characters involved to mean what they mean. But here it's the two previously established Fake-Members of SADD working to try and reunite with their group - That feels like it needs some mental insight to work. We get none.

The floatiness in mental pacing continues here, and it's actually working fairly well now, establishing that Jordan just isn't sure what's going on or what to do. Yoss has decided to use a lot of elipsis' here over the previous run on sentences. It's lightly irritating to read, but I won't dispute its effectiveness.

There's actually a super adorable mental break here where Quincy gets a flashback of home - I think in mordern SOTF this would have been a memory thread, but the fact that it cuts back into dialogue makes it very vivid - and the fact that the character is described as thinking about his past works too. This re-unites Jordan with another member of his previous group, alongside a new character - Warren! Warren is also handled by Quincy's handler and he is... Interesting to read. He seems to add snarky IC commentary about past Versions, which seems oddly crude to me personally.

As with the last time around, there are ridiculous stunts that belong firmly in the movies; one incident sticks out firmly in my mind, in which a shrill, psychotic harpy thing with two basketballs attached to her fragile rail of a torso backflipped over an enraged hockey player.

But hey Warren is not the focus of this piece, Jordan is, so let's get back to him! Dorian is pointing an SMG at him now, and he's worried about dying, bemoans being in the friendzone and affirms his membership in SADD. Hannah even joins them, and they all gather round in vague non-murdery harmony for a split second before the announcements start. Someone describes Danya as having a 'sinister pedophile' voice which raises interesting questions and or implications.

Then, bam - Neil Sinclair is dead. This affects a lot of characters, and the scene abruptly changes - Quincy has decided to betray the group, Jordan is upset he decided to betray the group before he could, and attacks before he can gun the group down. It's a very selfish vs selfish motivation setup and manages to make both characters feel like people you don't feel sorry for.

Jordan's floaty narrative style doesn't work as well in fight scenes in my personal opinon, but it's satisfying when he snaps into action. It's not the most subtle of style transitions, but I like it. Going from floaty, to rapid and indecisive, to anger in a few lines.

There's then a fairly huge monologue from Jordan that feels... Clunky. He lampshades it, but that doesn't make it any better.

Hannah then dies from a gutshot a post earlier. It's a sad death, her noting she's not even the centre of attention as she dies, with only Jordan really caring for her. It's a short death, but this one really gets me nice in my feels.

Her death drives Jordan to really lash out at the rest of the participants of the argument, pointing his shiny new wrestled away colt at Quincy. Dorian joins in the speeches game, with some good old fashioned punching and talking. This works a little better as there's more body language and tension being instilled in the listener so it feels more believable to me.

Eventually, Quincy just runs away, and Jordan begins to hear a voice in his head. He keeps holds of the gun and reloads, then asks Dorian what he wants to do. It seems Jordan isn't going to be the one who snaps here though, as Mark snaps and slams his sword into Warren. Warren has a suprisingly short and... Bland death for such an interesting character. Given his constant insistence in this scene that the game is faked somehow, there's no earth shattering realisation when the sword cuts him open, he just thinks about all the things he has left unfinished and dies.

Jordan's weakness in this scene is still very much technical, with thoughts like -

I didn't wanted to KILL anyone...

Really jarring me out of the reading experience. Maybe it's harsh to keep picking up on this, but I'm surprised that this isn't something being brought up to them in a constructive manner at the time.

The voices in Jordan's head seem to be 'telling' him to kill, but then he interrupts the voices to take control of his thoughts entirely as he kills. It's a weird twist on the usual narrative, with Jordan having already made the decision on his own. It doesn't sit overly well with me, but it's an interesting way to play with the concept I will admit.

Mark's death is weird, with him being weirdly detached from reality, but his ego really shines through in his death. It's a tiny bit wordy for a final speech IMO, but I can dig it as a thematic closeout. Maybe I'm just a sucker for chess references. This breaks Dorian and he runs off away from the now 3 time killer Jordan, which tbh seems wise, although he does it because he thinks he's a bad omen.

One interesting note is that at this point, Jordan's "floaty" narrative style has been completely lost, making him feel more present and in touch with reality. This emphasises a lot of the emotional conflict he's going through as he can no longer really deny what he's been doing, and yet not making him seem like he's getting ‘better' by having a voice in his head turn up to help reinforce the idea of him as relatively unstable.

Jordan then sits in the forest for a while and argues with the voice in his head. And... Decides to go back into the jungle after spending nearly 8 days stuck in it. At least he has a direction now though as he actually ends up in the Jailhouse.

In this new thread we determine that the yellow text is actually a sentient version of Jordan's instincts, telling him what to do in these tough times. This explains the self-mockery I suppose.

Jordan actually ends up dreaming about winning, which is kind of tragic seeing as I'm fairly sure he's not V3's winner. He then just ends up dreaming about kind of like, home life, meeting a girl. Relatable idyllic stuff for people. Somehow I kinda like that the most, the fact that he just wants simple shit to be happy, even after all this.

Renee interrupts his sleep and a grumpy and revolver armed Jordan confronts her, demanding her story so he can see if it checks out. Which, tbh, seems wise. They talk about the groups they were both in that fell apart. Somehow Jordan knows there's only 2 SADD members left, despite not knowing if the group he met was the whole group or not, and he's set on killing Quincy for his treason. I call this out SPECIFICALLY because in his next post he actually IC learns about Dorian (the third member of their SADD group) dying. He even has quite a strong reaction to it, calling Danya a son of a bitch. Gottem, I guess.

After this, Renee attacks Jordan with an arrow, there's a struggle between the two. Renee begins to unload a significant bit of their worldview to Jordan, explaining that 'everyone plays eventually', mirroring Jordan's own thoughts there. I appreciate that from a thematic PoV. Her death is relatively short, and weirdly detached. Feels quick though, so that's a blessing.

Jordan thinks momentarily about trying to save them, but decides he can't do anything at this point, and also they're now in a dangerzone. Jordan shouts at her corpse a little and then runs the hell away.

The setup for the next thread includes a wonderful OOC exchange between Theseus and Yossarian on the insanity of the imperial system and an accepting of them using metres to measure distance. I don't know why, but I feel that it's something that deserves mention.

Jordan pulls the arrow Renee left in him during their fight out, and the scream ends up attracting someone we've bet before in this story, Lenny Priestly. Lenny is alone this time, no Elizabeth. It seems Elizabeth is likely to be dead, given Lenny's matter of fact notation of that fact. At this point, Lenny is simply completely dead behind the eyes - self-destructive even, offering Jordan the chance to take the first shot at him before he tries to kill them back. Or the opportunity to fight barehanded or with their swords. Apparently, the greater risk of a victorious injury doesn't bother the remaining Priestly.

Jordan's instincts try and tell him to just shoot Lenny, but instead he decides that the discussion he had with Renee was enough to risk his life to the end over, and takes a fist fight. On one hand, I can believe that this is simply him cracking under the pressure, but this feels like a character who has very little moral ground to stand on taking the high ground in order to justify a cooler scene.

Then, an interloper arrives, the gloriously named Shameeca. She fires at the two as they wrestle on the ground, and they exchange heated words as Lenny pulls out his handgun. There's a lot of history between these two characters and it oozes through this scene, but I'll leave this for the RAT of those two. The fight scene here is very interestingly put together, and there's a lot of nuance that goes into it. The turn on a misfire is - whilst unlikely - a very nice way to reverse a situation dramatically, and it ends with Jordan and Lenny returning to beating one another in a wonderful Call-Response set up, with my favourite example being;

It was almost the perfect setting for a fight like this. Darkness, on the beach. Two boys just beating each other with all their might. Beautiful

Being followed immediately by

No, it wasn't beautiful. At least in Jordan's opinion.

Which not only highlights the contrast between the two characters, but actually reads surprisingly well for what it is.

Eventually the two grow tired of each other taking blows and sort of stagger apart, with Lenny throwing Jordan off. Lenny then simply does the obvious thing and points his gun at Jordan after it becomes obvious he's not trying to kill him - which he sees as making him undeserving of life. As rationales go it's not the nicest going around but hey at least he mostly kept his word.

Jordan then goes on a huge rant, which his internal narrative even notes is probably going to lead to his death. All of the choices leading up to this have made the self-destructiveness of that action feel properly in character however, so I won't criticise that aspect. Lenny, unsurprisingly, simply ices the guy with a few shots from his gun.

Jordan's death is a very long near-oneshot inserted after the fight scene is over, which includes a dying dream that's not exactly the happiest note to leave this plane of existence on. It has the object of his affections tell him that if he survived, she would have killed him anyway. I approve of Yoss torturing his character like this, it's a nice emotional twist of the knife as he goes down with two extra holes courtesy of Lenny. It also pays off the earlier setup with Alex which carried through his character nicely, tying him together with a neat bow, which is a hard thing to pull off in SOTF.

Overall, I liked Jordan, but I can't say there's much to recommend. A lot of the things that could have been interesting to play around with - I think a few oneshots of him being lost in the jungle would have done wonders to ground him for example - were left by the wayside. Instead, Jordan mostly feels like a decent character who never got a moment to properly show off the worst or best of themselves on the island, but ended up in some very interesting scenes.

I'll take another if there's still murder-nuggets to go around.

[Original critique by Murder Weasel]

[+] Evan Gage

Here we go, Evan Gage. I have no clue who this is. I thought he was the Evan I just met with Dawn, but he's a different Evan. The wiki says he lived for only one thread and got DZed. A quick glance tells me he was inactive killed.

First up, the profile. Evan's actual name is Evangelos Gage. I think that Evangelos is a way more interesting name than Evan and I sorta wish he was in the wiki as that. He has only two interests, art and martial arts. This isn't uncommon for V3 and it's a decent sign that the two things are pretty distinct, but there's a big reason three has become the generally accepted minimum. The fewer points of interest/complexity a character has, the less likely they are to be nuanced off the bat.

Evan is a bit too thin. His profile tells a lot about how his look varies but not so much about what it's like when the game is going on. This is a super common pre-V5 profile sin and shouldn't be held against anyone, but it makes it pretty hard to riff off someone's appearance when you hear that sometimes his hair is spiked but sometimes it's just left alone. Also, it's dyed a variety of colors, but okay, which? And a bunch at once? In sequence? It sounds like at once, which is interesting. His hair is naturally black so I assume he bleaches a lot. And of course, Evan's hair isn't all that's colorful: "His right eye is a light green and his left, a very light brown."

Evan's family is Greek. His grandparents moved from Greece and sometimes tell stories, which is the only real connection to his heritage he feels. This makes me instantly relate to him. Evan has an older brother named Andreas who is his best friend; he doesn't have a lot of friends because while he's cheerful he's also guarded. He really likes drawing, and he also likes martial arts but isn't very good at it yet. He's a good student, and while he's picked on sometimes he's good at talking his way out of trouble and doesn't get into fights.

Evan's advantages are that he can handle himself at least a bit and he's slow to trust. His disadvantage is that he's used to being in control so he wigs out if he loses it.

Evan's profile is super sparse, but aside from the wacky hair and heterochromia his concept is really grounded for the era and I get a good idea of the sort of guy he is. The profile does its job, has a few hooks to play off of, and does make me interested to see where Evan goes in the game.

And where he goes is to a thread called "High Voltage."

Evan's introduced walking through the rain, singing "Nobody Knows The Troubles I've Seen" to himself. He spies a jail and thinks that, hey, jails are pretty secure, maybe he can camp out and avoid the psychos. It's noted that he's seen some of these. He's also seen a bunch of movies; his assigned weapon is a portable dvd player and a stack of dvds. I'm pretty down with this first paragraph; it establishes that Evan's been about in the game, and it gives him an interesting thing that he and only he has been doing.

Evan thinks nobody will show up, then has a little tangent on an ill-explained "they" that doesn't land quite right. He sees a group in the doorway and while tensions seem high they're not shooting yet. Evan decides they're probably afraid, but everyone's afraid so that works for him. It's a good line of thought. He speaks up, though afraid himself, proposing that the group barricade the jail. Minor note: please start a new paragraph for dialogue! It's convention for a reason and helps with readability.

Some character I've never heard of named Keith Jackson has been camped out in the jail and isn't really down with a bunch of strangers wandering in. He tells Evan and Boxer Carvalho to go away, brandishing a gun to drive his point in.

Evan thinks "fuck" eight times and then yells it once. He then lays into Keith, passionately explaining that going it alone is a bad strategy, that the safest thing is to get enough people together that nobody would think of trying anything. He pleads with Keith, offering to be strip-searched if it'd help, while admitting that it is ultimately Keith's decision whether or not he'll be allowed inside.

Everyone and their dog piles into the thread and Evan is only mentioned by name once more a page later. As such, I read only what was relevant to his story, a chunk of Keith's next post. Keith thinks Evan is unhinged and tells him to keep his clothes on. But because the thread has also attracted Darnell Butler and Jon Cox, everyone's tense and on the edge of violence.

Evan is next mentioned in the very last post in the thread, now under the tender care of SOTF Help. Keith has killed John Cox and Evan wants none of that so he goes to hide in some bushes. He's oddly concerned about Kallie, who he never seemed to notice let alone know the name of before, and also the post calls him John by mistake once.

Evan decides to go back and give them a piece of his mind, but Alice Jones is there now and she's carrying around Guy Rapide's severed head. Evan freaks again and is also a little offended that he's the suspicion one; after all, he's not carting around any body parts. He's so distracted he pays no mind to the announcements, but he does notice when everyone else cheeses it. He's glad to finally have his hiding place to himself, though.

Evan's halfway to the second floor when his collar beeps. Suddenly everything makes a whole lot more sense, and he feels pretty silly. He trips over his shoelaces, though, and rolls down the stairs "ass over teakettle," hitting his head on the wall and passing out. Then his collar goes off and he dies.

My thoughts: Well, first off, I wouldn't really recommend Evan. He has only four paragraphs written by his original handler. The first sets up what he's been doing pretty well. The second gets us into his mentality and gives him a motivation. The next two are a monologue. None of it's badly written, but this scene is way too cluttered already and Evan vanishes with no impact so he's just adding confusion and filling space. It's also really frustrating when characters vanish—it strains believability.

Evan's death at the hands of SOTF_Help is mostly serviceable. The criteria I wrote for inactive deaths a lot later (and in the context of staff tests) is:

We want these to hit these notes, in order of importance:
Not totally stupid: We laugh at random rock deaths for a reason. You may have to go the accident route, but sell it. Respect physics. Justify the death instead of throwing it out randomly. Basically, make it a scene that's not totally cringe-worthy.
Respectful: We try to treat inactives decently. Just because a handler left or went terminal or got banned, that doesn't mean they didn't put a lot of work into a character. It doesn't have to be a magnum opus; we understand that writing other people's kids is a pain in the neck. You should just make sure that your death isn't taking shots at the character/handler. Similarly, don't introduce elements that are offensive or upsetting to the community at large in an inactive death. If a character has problematic elements, steer clear of dealing with them unless you are certain you can do so tastefully.
True to the character: This is tough. We know that. Try to keep to at least hints of the character's voice and/or established personality, development, and story, though. Wrapping loose ends (or at least acknowledging them) is a really nice touch.
Original: If you can pull out something creative and different, sweet. We want that. That wows us. It's way less major than the other three, though, and we often see all three sacrificed in favor of this. Don't do that.

I think Evan's death passes point one pretty well. It makes sense, is well-framed, and Evan never seems idiotic.

When it comes to respect, Evan's death is mostly there. Calling him "John" is a big oopsie. In the grand scheme of things, though, mistakes happen and it's only once.

The true-to-character bit is a bit rougher. Evan honestly feels like he's being used a bit as a prop/lens for characters who have left the scene. Furthermore, bringing him back to the scene to be further ignored when Guy's head comes out is IMO a misstep; it makes things sillier and more complicated and there's no payoff. My director's cut version would just have him distracted otherwise (maybe watching his movies?) and then go to check out why everyone left.

Original? Nah, not really, but that's okay.

So, on the whole, Evan's profile has some decent promise. He doesn't actually get to do anything, though, and is inactive killed. There's nothing offensive or awful about it, but there's also no particular reason to seek it out. If you're reading someone else in the scene, he might make momentarily interesting set dressing (and then vanish confusingly), but even then he's not adding a ton. He's mostly just there.

One more for the road.

[Original critique by Murder Weasel]

[+] Dawn Beckworth

Alright, I spent way too long not doing this, so here goes. Dawn Beckworth. What I know about Dawn off the bat is that she's connected to Badass Jonny and that at some point she was controlled by GameMaker and Jonny by D/N, but IIRC neither was the original handler. D/N and GM are good stuff, and I think Dawn's death resulted in the BDA that resulted in that messy cross-version Hero deal I was explaining in chat a few days ago, so my expectations are that this is gonna be an intriguing ride with perhaps some rough spots around the edges.

Huh, the wiki says Riz killed Dawn. I don't super remember this but that means maybe I've read her end before.

Dawn's profile is kinda brief but par for the V3 course. She's a redhead who looks younger than is, and she's worn her favorite necklace since she was ten—slightly unclear if she's done so continuously or not, and I sort of wish this was more clear because if so that's a quirky yet decently believable trait.

Dawn is also deaf. It's slightly unclear how her parents realized this, but seemingly she was more interested in visual things (especially nature) than her own family. Dawn is really into nature and really shy, especially with boys. Her advantages are that she's familiar with nature and pretty quick, and her disadvantages are that she's deaf and shy.

That said, not to harp for too long on why profile standards changed, but I think Dawn's is a good example. Her profile is whats, but all centered on a few key traits. There are no whys and no real hows. There's no real depth. Coming out of this I expect Dawn to be shy, deaf, and into nature, but that's all I could tell you about her. Why does she like nature? How does she feel about her disability? What causes her shyness? Why do boys amplify it? We'll have to read her story and hope we find out.

Dawn's first thread is "A Moment's Hesitation/The Pedestrian" which my digging leads me to believe was two distinct threads merged by staff to avoid the thread cap being violated. Whatever happened probably came after Dawn's entrance, however.

We learn that Dawn woke up on the third day and that she doesn't remember the events of the Prologue too well. She was also somewhat baffled because she of course hadn't heard any of the announcements. She decided that Danya's guide to survival was a joke (in a nice character tic, she blames some "video gamer") and that she'd been given a gun to hunt with. Except then she found five corpses and that went out the window. After managing to slightly recover, she took to wandering the island again, sketching the beauty she found so as to avoid thinking about the ugliness.

Dawn sees a boy (Evan Angler) and goes up to him, presenting him with her notebook where she asks what's going on and also reveals that she is mute as well as deaf.

There's a lot of good stuff in this opening on a conceptual level, but also some things that don't sit right with me. I like that Dawn's denial doesn't last long. I like that her seeming serenity is explicitly called out as her repressing the horrible situation. I'm willing to give her a pass on not being that shy after all because she hasn't seen anyone in like a week.

What's rougher is a lot of the mechanics at play. Dawn is deaf. She's very lucky to have avoided danger zones! She also has absolutely no clue what's going on... despite having read Danya's guide and then seen bodies. This comes along with one of the biggest version-specific flaws of V3: characters wandering in like they're just coming back from a smoke break when the game is well underway. V1 and V2 had some of this, of course, but in my experience it was handwaved and in so being was actually more effective. If a character has been hiding out, I'm fine with it. If a character was unconscious for multiple days, then spent ages actively searching for others with no success, I'm less down.

A big thing about Dawn's intro is it reads like a handler eager to get into the action and putting details aside to do so. I wish it spent a little more time catching us up, but I'm not going to hold it too much against Dawn now that we're actually moving.

Evan is engaged in a shouting match across a bridge with Abel Williams; Dawn, being deaf, has no idea. Evan quickly summarizes the situation in writing. Dawn, in turn, fairly quickly accepts that Evan is telling the truth. She decides she has no chance of making good use of her gun, and resolves to give it to Evan. A good moment is when she considers just handing it to him but decides pulling it out would look suspect so instead tells him she has it and offers it that way. On the other hand, I wish we got a little bit of why Dawn doesn't want it herself.

Further discussion is had, with Dawn and Evan unsure whether or not to trust Abel. A recurrent issue for Dawn at this stage comes in the form of slightly sloppy sentences. Sometimes things just won't line up right. An example is this chunk of her third post: "Considering she has 'heard' from Evan, she is under the presumption that he is at the very least a decent guy. Considering that wasn't the case, she cannot come to any solutions on how to trust him." I think what this is trying to convey is that she's trusting Evan for now, and is at a loss as to what to do if he turns out to be unworthy. I don't want to harp on phrasing/style too much, especially because there's no telling if English is even her handler's first language given SOTF's international membership (though the profile indicates Wisconsin as location). I would, however, like to once again suggest that everyone read every post before actually posting it, just to catch weird little hiccups/slips that sneak in otherwise.

Dawn is a bit sad that her drawings are being written over. I like this, except that it comes only from Dawn's post; maybe Evan was intended to have been writing carefully around them. It's tough to say.

Michael Anders, property of Pigeon Army (one of the V3/4 handlers I miss most) appears. Unfortunately, he brings a continuity snarl with him. Michael points out that it's heavily raining, something not brought up otherwise in the scene. He also bails them out by noting that Evan and Dawn are sheltered by a tree. Still, it's an awkward predicament, especially because looking back I find that Michael is right: the announcements pretty clearly say it's raining hard. Evan no-sells Michael's retcon, and the rain isn't mentioned. Honestly, this one isn't entirely on either side. It's important to keep track of the island's conditions, but it's also not great form to roll into someone's thread and restage it, even in accordance with the overall directions. Better to figure stuff out via PM, or just join another thread.

Melina Frost rolls into the thread, freshly blinded and burned, and seemingly with an entourage in tow. She immediately opens fire on Michael. Abel shouts a warning. Madison Connor joins the attack on Melina's side. Michael is grazed, and manages to fumble his weapon down the ravine.

Dawn's post notes it's been rewritten due to some sort of conflict. It's functional but sparse. Dawn is a bit shocked by Michael's albinism. She's also shocked by the attack. She wants to tell Evan to take her gun, but of course that would take way too long, so she realizes she has to do it instead. Unfortunately, Madison shines a laser pointer in her eyes, so instead of doing that she freaks out, blinded. This is actually probably my favorite Dawn post to date, because Dawn makes a lot of silly but believable and humanizing mistakes. She doesn't know what to do or how to react, comes to a decision in a great character moment, then fails to actually follow through.

Several posts of OOC notes follow, disrupting scene flow. A bunch of stuff happens, but Dawn leaves in a one-liner without discussing any of it so I'm not going to talk about it either.

On the whole, I actually think Dawn's first thread has some good stuff. We get to meet her, and while her handler is still clearly trying to suss out exactly who Dawn is and how she works, progress is made over the course of the thread. Everyone else has pretty decent showings too; I'm intrigued by Melina and friends and the drama they bring with them. They do, however, also bring the biggest point of awkwardness to the thread: this feels like an opening thread set on Day One for Dawn and everyone interacting with her, but like it's taking place well into the game for Melina and cohorts. This is of course because that was exactly the situation, but it still causes some tonal dissonance for the reader.

On to Dawn's second thread: "3's & 7's"

Dawn enters the thread having gotten separated from Evan. Even in such dire circumstances, she can't help but admire the beauty of nature, and then she looks up and finds herself alone. I'm more willing to buy this from Dawn than most characters due to her deafness; Dawn can't shout for her lost ally, and she can't try to track his footsteps.

She sees someone entering a building, and despite some trepidation caused by her experiences with Melina and the rest, she follows. The musing on Melina is good; Dawn realizes they're the same people she saw around school, and is disturbed by their transformation.

Dawn finds herself in the middle of a confrontation between Nicholas Nutbrown and Will Sigurbjornsson, gets nervous, and scribbles a request not to be hurt. The post is on the whole strong, a continued upwards trajectory for Dawn. My nitpick is that there's a hole in Dawn's story. This post gets her into the thread in a really competent manner, but there's no real resolution to what Dawn experienced in her first thread. There's no payoff and aside from her moment of discarded suspicion she hasn't been changed in any notable way, and I'm not sure why. This could be her first post and it wouldn't feel at all out of place, and while that normally wouldn't be terrible even for a second thread, it sits weirdly with me given how abrupt Dawn's exit from the last thread was.

Evan catches back up with Dawn, which makes me like her getting separated even more because her partner notices she's gone and then actually does something about it. Evan draws his gun and enters a standoff with Will, causing Nicholas to take the opportunity to slink off with a parting insult. Then everyone's collars start to beep—the DZs have shifted, but seemingly without an announcement. Will opens fire on Evan, but Evan's already running, and in so doing he bumps into his friend, Gabe McCallum. They jet, leaving Dawn without any hesitation.

Dawn's post recaps her reactions. She's relieved when Evan arrives, nervous at the tense situation, and then shocked and upset when she's ditched. She's unsure what to do, but sets out on her own, running to push her sorrow away and in so doing luckily escaping the DZ. It's another good post from Dawn, hitting all the notes I want In fact, Dawn probably has the strongest showing in this thread. It's just over incredibly quickly, a casualty of the DZ situation.

Next stop: "These Walls"

Dawn comes into the thread with a really nice line: "The rain hid Dawn's tears but her eyes, visibly bloodshot, betrayed her." She's trying to put her abandonment behind her, but it's not working. Even the natural world around her is no longer a source of consolation; instead, Dawn resents it for continuing about its business, uncaring to the suffering on the island.

Dawn looks in her bag and realizes Evan never gave her gun back. While she offered it willingly, she's now overcome with regret, castigating herself for being stupid. She goes into the jailhouse to get out of the rain and spies (drumroll) Badass Johnny, who she writes a plea for help to even while thinking she'll just drag him down like Evan.

This post is good stuff. The usual Dawn problem remains (clunky phrasing and sometimes saying the exact opposite of what is clearly meant), but Dawn's experiencing serious development as a result of what she's faced, changing and hardening in interesting and believable ways.

Badass Johnny is under the control of D/N who is great, and Badass Johnny himself is pretty good from the one post I've read. I won't go on a ton because this is about Dawn, but a thing D/N does is the sort of remix thing I complained about with Ricky but to a different end. Johnny's post does a bit of integrating with and interpreting of Dawn's shorter, more minimal post, but it does so in a way that pushes Dawn, makes her sound interesting and cool. It's a much more cooperative mindset, and works for both characters, though there's a risk of accidentally overstepping. We'll see if that crops up.

Llama's Noah enters the thread, trailing a Dead Kennedys songpost. It's not perfect, and Noah kind of feels like he's still getting established (the wiki tells me he's had three threads before this) but it's actually a pretty good post on the whole, digging into some of the island's ethical quandaries and the hope of escape or rescue. Not gonna dwell on him a ton either, because this is about Dawn, but one cycle in everyone in this thread is doing pretty well.

Dawn is expecting Badass Johnny to be nasty to her, and is pleasantly surprised when he's not. Of course, she can't help but think Evan was nice too until he suddenly ditched her, but enough of her optimism remains that she pushes that aside. She sees Noah looking in the door and makes a snap judgment that he's probably not dangerous. Normally I'd look askance at this, but it's how Dawn has treated pretty much everyone not waving guns around to this point and a similar process was just detailed so I'm putting this down as character trait. Another good post from Dawn.

Badass Johnny thinks Dawn is cute. He's less willing to immediately trust Noah, but does trust Dawn enough to tell her to go for his gun if stuff gets hairy. Noah, it turns out, is looking for Lex Machina for purposes of brutal revenge. This was hinted at in his first post but now that it's more clear he becomes more interesting and feels more up to speed for day whatever it is. He doesn't realize Dawn is deaf and mute.

Dawn struggles to figure out what "JIC" means in Badass Johnny's note but eventually gets it. I wish her post explained because I've got no clue. Wait... "Just In Case?" Guessing here. Dawn thinks she should repay Badass Johnny somehow. But how? What if... wink wink nudge nudge. This comes more or less out of nowhere and doesn't really feel appropriate to the scene, but effort is at least made to sell it. Dawn thinks Badass Johnny is handsome despite his scars, and also she's scared of dying here, but on the other hand what if her parents saw? Basically my issue here is it feels like a jump to sexy times for a female character that doesn't really have any leanings in that direction prior to this point, and that's something that makes me really leery, but it doesn't ruin Dawn or anything. I think the problem is that it's tossed in rather randomly, less than five minutes after she met Badass Johnny, in an otherwise tense and unresolved situation. This is a post that belongs in a thread with nobody else as they strike camp for the night, not the middle of a tricky introduction to a dude using a harpoon as a walking stick. On the other hand, points for letting Dawn have her own sexuality, desires, etc. And that is the focus here, despite a bit of tee-heeing around; Dawn is not being sexualized by any narrative but her own internal one, and the descriptions of the scene stay pretty chaste aside from noting hr blush.

Badass Johnny says he's down to help Noah look for his friends. He gets some really nice interiority that fleshes out his relationships with the football team and also grounds him a little bit, pushing some of his conceptual weirdness aside. Badass Jonny's posts are two to four times the size of everyone else's but they're fun, easy reads and it doesn't feel like he's dominating the scene. Take notes, folks!

Noah's post says he's skipping Dawn but it was actually his turn anyways? He does effectively nothing, just asks what everyone else wants to do.

Of the three people Noah is looking for, John Stoppard is a good friend of Badass Johnny's, Kyrie Joseph is a good friend of Dawn's, and Lex is target of a revenge quest but nobody except Noah knows that just now. Dawn's still dancing around her crush thing on Badass Johnny but won't touch it indirectly so instead she asks if she can ask him a question. Whenever Irene does that I say "You just did," but maybe Badass Johnny is less of a smart aleck. Dawn's post is solid if a bit minimal. One thing I'm mixed on is the rehashing of the entire contents of every note Badass Johnny writes to her. I'm more accepting of this than dialogue rehashing because there's an actual gap in time; Badass Johnny writes the note at a specific point in his post but then Dawn doesn't read it until later in her post, at which point her thoughts are woven in. Still, that leaves me reading a recap of what Noah said (which I also read) twice; I've effectively heard Noah's plan three times in four posts and that's a bit more than I need.

Badass Johnny thinks Dawn is being cagey and weird because she suspects Noah, so he really subtly goes and gets his shotgun and also his notebook where he's written a draft of his novel. If it doesn't get trashed, it's probably in the terrorists' library now. Maybe Mara read it! Rugga, we need a canon answer from Mara as to whether Badass Johnny's novel is any good. Noah's post opens with an OOC apology for how much it sucks. Protip: never do this. It does nothing good. If the post really sucks too much to post, don't post it. If you post it, just let the reader make up their own mind. For example, in this case, Noah's post is actually totally fine. The announcements play, he finds out Lex won BKA, and he lets out a shout of frustration before remembering that he's keeping the vengeance quest thing under his hat.

Dawn is still dancing around the question awkwardly. The longer this plot goes the better it gets because it's really painfully awkward in a way that I like. She wants to be a little coy so she draws an arrow to the next page, then thinks maybe Badass Johnny won't understand so also writes that he should turn the page. Then she doesn't want to write the s-e-x word so uses a euphemism. Dawn notices that Badass Johnny is really distracted but has no idea what's going on until she puts two and two together and figures out it's about announcement time. Noah's freaking out but again Dawn is deaf so she has no clue why. She immediately fears Kyrie is dead and won't even let herself complete the thought lest she accidentally will it into reality. According to the wiki, Kyrie is not dead at this time.

Badass Johnny is disappointed the announcements are back—they've been AWOL for a bit. He realizes Dawn probably has no clue about that. Danya calls BKA the best kill of the month instead of the day and Badass Johnny's narrative makes fun of him for it. Shame, V3 staff, shame! Badass Johnny flips his lid at Noah because Lex won BKA so maybe isn't such a good friend to find, but almost immediately backs down as he realizes Noah isn't looking happy either. Badass Johnny takes a moment to read Dawn's message, but the timing is horrible and he gets super flustered and decides that, you know, Noah's thing isn't really that important. Badass Johnny is also awkward as all get-out so he beats around the bush and tries to be nice and doesn't really say yes but also doesn't really say no; he's developed a pretty fast crush on Dawn.

Noah admits he wants to kill Lex, but John and Kyrie he's looking to help. He's pretty chill about the shotgun-pointing thing.

Dawn is super confused about what just went down with Noah because she can't hear anything. She wants to know, though, and resolves to ask. Dawn chooses to interpret Badass Johnny's message as acceptance of her proposal and writes something sweet but ends it with "PS why was so Noah upset?" Dawn kisses Badass Johnny on impulse and her post reminds us that nobody's showered or brushed their teeth in over a week. This plotline is seriously getting better every post. Like, I'm not being ironic at all here; it's hitting pretty much every weird, awkward note I'd want to see as two clueless, scared teenagers who don't actually know each other fumble through mutual attraction in a terrible circumstance. My only beef is how it kicks off; this is something that would feel way more natural to slip in, say, the pair's second thread after a day of traveling together; right now I'm pretty sure they've been in each other's presence for less than ten minutes but I'm going to handwave it and ay it was a while because the announcements played and stuff.

Badass Johnny mentions in passing that he saw Bobby Jacks, considering shooting him, and didn't. Then Bobby Jacks shot three dudes and ran off. I'm pretty sure that was Sound And Fury. He says he'll help Noah if he has to but won't kill Lex in cold blood, which is an eminently reasonable stance. Badass Johnny sort of explains the situation to Dawn—he summarizes a bit but it feels for convenience, not patronizing. He also realizes she'll have no clue who's died overall and who is killing and decides to tell her what he remembers as they travel (read: between threads). This is a nice thing to think of and also I'm glad it's happening offscreen. Badass Johnny's post is a songpost and the song adds nothing but it's otherwise good.

Noah is placed in the lead but he secretly doesn't know where he's going so just picks a random direction. He feels kind of guilty about bringing Dawn and Badass Johnny along for his vendetta because obviously they have their own thing going on, but he tells himself it's okay because they'll die anyways. Then he thinks Lex will almost certainly also die anyways so the whole thing's kind of pointless, really. Faced with this existential crisis, he doubles down and decides that he has to do his part to be extra sure Lex dies.

As they leave, Dawn is feeling a whole lot better. Nature is no longer repulsive to her. She's optimistic, even if apprehensive about Noah's quest. They move on.

On the whole? This is a good thread. I have a few nitpicks here and there, but they're mostly pacing. This thread becomes a really good thread if you wiggle your fingers and pretend that after Post 10 Badass Johnny says something like "Actually, everyone's tired so we should rest a little," and then everyone hangs out overnight sort of getting to know each other, and then Post 11 happens the next morning right before the announcements play. That's seriously the only thing it takes to put this pretty decently in line with any modern thread, but it doesn't happen and so the introduction of the sex angle is jarring and awkward. But it's played pretty well after that point, and every character in this thread is interesting in their own right and also contributing to the scene as the whole. They have an interesting dynamic and are very readable. Good stuff.

Next stop: "A Convoluted Conventicle" (of Morgan Ackland deathpost fame)

Right off the bat I notice Dawn has been adopted. On the bright side, she has been adopted by GameMaker who is a cool dude and a good writer. On the downside, you know what? I liked Dawn quite a bit and I hate seeing characters change hands. It's like you get to know someone and then one day they're subtly off (or I guess have a psychotic break and decide they're the reincarnation of Caligula but I don't need to explain the issue there). Having read Dawn, there's a certain something fitting about this adoption, though, because in V4 GameMaker's character, Kaitlin Anderheim, was adopted and ended up in a romantic plot. I always felt a little weird about that for reasons that aren't entirely logical (hit me up in chat sometime and I'll do my best to explain) but knowing that the shoe was on the other foot in V3 makes me feel a little better about it, because it means GM almost certainly understood the situation better than most.

Now I actually start to read the post. Dawn and friends end up in the Graveyard. This is funny, because while I didn't touch on it last thread, Badass Johnny was like "Alright, Noah dude, we will follow you anywhere you go except the graveyard." Dawn doesn't know this, of course.

Dawn's mental narrative has shifted a bit with the change in management; she's always had italicized thoughts, but now they sound like this: "isn't this whole place a graveyard? After all, your classmates are all dying out there... But you get to be the lucky one, you get to actually die in the graveyard, you stupid fucking wh-" She also calls Badass Johnny "Jonathan" now which I'll give partial credit for because Dawn saw his book in the last thread and it had his full name on it. She shifts back to "Johnny" later, though, so yeah, I'm okay with it. Dawn sees Velvet Retsiloh run in and deduces that she's trying to warn them about something, then notices Morgan Ackland puking. She wants to ask Badass Johnny about that too, but she's already given him her notebook (with a question about Velvet in it) and is frustrated.

This post is alright. The adoption is not the smoothest I've seen; it's clear that the parts of Dawn that speak to GM are not the parts that were most important to Neuphim. GM is interested in Dawn's fears and frustrations and uncertainties, whereas Neuphim seemed to be more concerned with her progress and the arc of her morale. As a result, Dawn feels like she's backpedaled on some of her development from the last thread; she's in the same end position/mental state, but her doubts, rather than being vanquished, are at the forefront of her processes again.

The thread is now joined for a single post by special guest star John Rizzolo. I'm not gonna talk about him a ton because this is not Riz's critique, but Riz is a really interesting V3 character who does some pretty cool stuff and this is one of those things; he's chasing Velvet across the island through a bunch of other threads in a style that's been replicated a few times since, but the Riz chase is unique in that he actually has a fairly major impact on some of the others whose paths he crosses. In this case, he casually opens fire at the group and then runs off to continue his pursuit. This is why I didn't remember him killing Dawn, I'm realizing; Riz himself doesn't realize what he's done in the moment and never sees the impact.

Badass Johnny's post starts with an apology for its quality; see earlier comments for my feelings on those. When Riz gets aggressive, Badass Johnny shouts for everyone to get down, then remembers Dawn's deaf and gives her a push. The drive-by is sold pretty well here, but actually suffers a little because Badass Johnny's post has to retcon a bunch of stuff that Riz's didn't mention, such as Badass Johnny having a pretty big shotgun he's openly carrying around. It's deftly navigated, though, and doesn't leave anything feeling too cheaty.

Morgan's up next. We get a nice description of her puke: "Morgan stared down at her own product for a moment. It was mostly fluid, with bits of nearly digested cracker and an assortment of other slimey chunks she couldn't quite recognize. They floated serenely in the muck. It was more of a Rozsda than a Munch." Nothing else of import to Dawn happens and I'll spare James the dredging of the less-awesome line from this post.

Noah's confused as all get-out. A slight nitpick: Riz fires multiple shots, Noah is like, "Huh, that was a few shots," then he's like "Maybe I should get out of the way" and then he ducks and a bullet zings into a gravestone. It's a weird bit of Matrix-time that doesn't quite work; my unsolicited director's cut would be to have Noah jump for cover well after everything went down. It's not like Riz needs an excuse to miss a questionably-aimed burst of snap fire, especially since of his three bullets one has wounded Badass Johnny and another has injured Dawn. Noah has the announcements play to justify cheesing it because the graveyard is a DZ; he also gets upset because the friends he was looking for are dead and Lex won BKA again. The pacing on announcements in V3 is kinda awkward, especially because the scene until this point was set the night before, and I really think the group has reason enough to run because they were just shot (at) by Riz. But the rest of Noah's post is solid.

We finally get back to Dawn. She sees Riz and holds some dislike for him, but because she doesn't know what he's been doing due to being deaf thinks maybe she should give him a chance. Riz shoots her in the gut. She has this initial moment of concern that she's going to look bad in front of Badass Johnny and then the more pressing issue of being in major pain hits. They flee. Badass Johnny shouts that Morgan should leave, but we all know how that turns out.

On the whole, this thread is more of a mixed bag than the one before it. Dawn has only two posts, and they both show signs of authorial uncertainty; it's hard to slip into an adopted character at the best of times, and Dawn is a character with an unusual style and some particular challenges. The thread also comes off as somewhat disjointed; it's the first time in Dawn's story I've hit the V3 length sin. Basically, everyone in the thread is taking what could be two or three posts and making them on post instead, so characters are reacting to stuff that happened in their own last post during their next post and so on. It makes things hard to track, means we're still getting Riz like five thousand words after he ran off after Velvet, and means that people are doing a lot of guessing or ignoring of each other's actions. This is all topped off with an unfortunate timeskip and the fact that Morgan—whose thread, I might add, everyone else is crashing—is effectively ignored for the entire scene, rolling around in her own vomit.

Next stop: Everdreamers. End of the line. All passengers must disembark.

I like the thread title right away, because it evokes Badass Johnny's book. Badass Johnny is trying to treat Dawn but has no clue what he's doing. He's going to give her morphine—I don't think that's in the first aid kits anymore. There's also a good flashback to his home life.

Dawn's hurting, upset, horrified by the situation. Her internal narrative is cursing again, and it still stands out as not quite right, even in the context of the rest of her post-adoption writing. Dawn knows she's dying but takes some comfort because Badass Johnny is there with her. A slight nitpick that came up in the last thread too: pre-adoption, Dawn used a bluish color for her writing, as did Badass Johnny. Afterwards, Badass Johnny keeps it up but Dawn shifts to italics. This is the rare situation where I prefer the color, because Dawn already has italic thoughts and it can be a little stumbling block.

Dawn tells Badass Johnny not to bother with the morphine and extraction. She knows she's doomed. She cries and kisses him one more time.

Badass Johnny writes to Dawn, about his book and his hope for an afterlife. He tells her he'll see her soon. Dawn hopes maybe not quite as soon as he thinks. Dawn thinks about Riz and can't make herself hate him. Dawn starts to write a final sentence, but she never manages to finish it.

So, what do I think about Dawn on the whole? She's pretty good! In her initial run under Neuphim, it's cool to watch a handler start to come into their own. The big awkward moment is the veer to sexland, but it's free of a lot of the baggage of the era and the problem's mostly pacing. Post-adoption, Dawn's handled by a much more technical writer. There are some hiccups with past characterization, and she actually only makes it four posts further, but on the whole it goes pretty darn well for a four-post adoption. Her death is legitimately sad, though I do think a lot of that comes from the gravitas Badass Johnny brings to the scene. I'm gonna disclose that I've been calling him Badass Johnny this whole time because I find it hilarious, but from all I've read he's also a legitimately good character with a good bit of intentional humor and some real depth, and his narrative almost never calls him Badass Johnny.

Would I recommend Dawn? Maybe! She's not bumping anyone off my all-time list of best SOTF characters, but she's a pleasant read, interacts with interesting characters, and isn't too long. I wish we'd gotten to see a little more of her, which is always a good sign.

I'll likely regret this and/or be glacial again, but barkeep? Another round!

HELLO ALL

These are the kids who are out on assignment right now. Since we have moved this whole shindig to the new board I am reassigning these characters unless you tell me within two weeks that you still want yours.

Ruggahissy: Brad Kavanagh (working on him will keep)
Frozen: Ken Lawson
Kermit: Bill (throw back)
Trash: Katherine Blanco
Toben: Jonathan Lancer
Jilly: Anna Kateridge
Blast: Steve Digaetano
Cicada: Shawn Waits
Prim: Derrick Taggart
Ohm: Michael Anders
Impe!: Nathanial Harris
Crossbow: Elizabeth Priestly
Mara: Karl Van Buren
Ink: Viki Valentine
Rattle: Monique St. Claire
Espi: Dante Cooper (throw back)
Yugi: Braden Marsh
Aura: Branca Braunstein (keeping)

[+] Jonathan Lancer

Alright, here we (finally) go. Today's subject will be Jonathan "Badass Johnny" Lancer. I actually read a lot of Johnny vaguely recently when I read through Dawn Beckworth, and so I'll be taking a slightly looser hand this time to avoid redundancy (which has already dampened my enthusiasm some). That said, it's all due to personal stuff involving rereading—Johnny is, at least from what I've read, a legitimately good character.

Without further ado, we go to Johnny's profile:

The first thing I discover is that Jonathan has no H but Johnny does. This doesn’t matter to anything except making him harder to find on the wiki. Johnny’s big hobbies are creative writing, especially sci-fi and fantasy, and football. He’s a sensitive jock who writes poetry. This is a great start; it takes two commonly-opposing elements and blends them, creating a character with some dynamic potential right from the get-go.

Johnny is badly scarred and blind in one eye (that partial blindness is news to me, and I read most of his story). He’s big and tough and is wearing overalls.

Johnny’s first book was Harry Potter, and I suspect his original handler was British because it’s the British version. Johnny’s brother, who introduced him to football, loved hunting, but when a ten-year-old Johnny finally got to come along, he ran into the line of fire and took a shotgun blast to the face. His brother, horrified and consumed by guilt, then shot himself, leaving the horribly-injured Johnny to scream for help.

You know, this is pretty typical V3 weirdness, but the core concept isn’t that bad. I think the problem here is that the profile sort of casually skips through this stuff without going into the whys very much. What exactly did Johnny do to get shot? Why did his brother shoot himself? If it’s, like, a thing where Johnny runs out at just the wrong time, or maybe even his brother’s being a bit unsafe too, and if his brother thinks he’s dead, then I can sort of buy it—it’s still way dramatic, but hey, it’s V3, and teens do dumb stuff sometimes. I can see freaking out if you think you just killed your little brother.

Johnny’s scars scared away everyone but the nastiest kids, and their taunts drove him into isolation. Johnny buried himself in football and reading. I do want to get at the football thing a little—it feels like he’d have some friends/connections on the team, maybe some folks to stick up for him, and also like maybe head trauma would be a thing to avoid when he’s undergone major reconstructive facial surgery? But we’ll move on.

Johnny made a friend who was another bookworm: Mark Tavarian (also crated and handled by RationalParanoia). Mark’s father had some unspecified accident, and Mark turned cold, but Johnny was too afraid to alienate his only friend to confront him on this. Mark is the one who dubbed Johnny “Badass Johnny,” because in their games Johnny was the daring muscle while Mark with the strategist.

Johnny’s profile finally brings up the team. They don’t really like him—he’s always quiet and gives them little to go off of. That doesn’t sound like great teamwork but it’s also middle school, so fair enough. As Johnny got older, he went from being weird and creepy to being big and scary so people stopped messing with him, which is a nice touch. Johnny is a pacifist and a romantic at heart, and has had several quiet crushes but been too shy to act.

Johnny’s advantages are that he’s big and tough. His disadvantages are that he’s socially maladjusted, scary, and a pacifist. I think I’d sorta want to see a firm ally in Mark under advantages and only having one eye under disadvantages.

On the whole? Johnny’s profile has some solid ideas, but they’re amped up to 11 when they’d probably stick better at about a 4-5, and they’re brought up in this casual, cursory manner that does not really do them justice. Still, the seeds for an interesting, complicated character are already sown. I think in V1 or V2 this all would stand out les, but Johnny landed late enough in V3 that this sort of highly-dramatic backstory was starting to become passé, and it seems that Mark had some similar issues.

Oh, also Johnny has a tactical shotgun. The roll gods had a sense of humor!

So Johnny’s first thread, and the only one he does not share with Dawn, is (sigh) Sound and Fury. For those not in the know, Sound and Fury is an incredibly long, complicated, bloated thread in which loads of different scenes are playing out at once, with only a loose semblance of a post order. This makes it a pain in the neck to navigate and Johnny goes inactive at some point. I’m only going to read stuff pertinent to Johnny here. He enters on post 18, goes dark on post 63, and is whisked away by Help in post 128. I’m skipping everything between those last two numbers.

We open Johnny’s first post with Mark, who is watching some folks smoke weed and tries to join their little party. The tone, however, suggests there’s something else going on, something vaguely sinister. But this isn’t about Mark.

Johnny has been following Mark, but for some reason has not announced his presence. We find out he’s been hiding out in the woods, and has seen Bobby Jacks kill someone. There’s a nice moment of reflection—he thinks of Bobby as human, notes that the boy was disturbed, and is in turn disturbed himself by that. He’s about to go talk to Mark, when who should arrive but Bobby himself. Johnny is noted to have been working on getting past his lasting shotgun-related trauma, which I’m glad to see brought up. He’s afraid Bobby’s going to kill again, and braces himself to have to try to kill the boy if need be... but seemingly only in Mark’s defense. It’s a good moment—we see that Johnny’s moral code is flexible, but not meaningless. He’s worried about his best friend, but spares little thought for the others.

Said others don’t buy Mark’s friendly act. This reads a little funny because Mark hasn’t really done anything weird and the reasons to distrust him are a bit of a reach—there’s some kind of odd jockeying for the upper hand that’s indicative of the more competitive vibe of parts of V3.

Bobby threatens Johnny, telling him to walk away. Johnny does, though gives a little speech on the similarities and differences between the pair. It’s slightly awkward because we’ve been told Johnny’s a quiet pacifist but here he’s monologuing and claiming to be a skilled fighter. I think the thrust behind the comparison is good, but maybe it would’ve been better kept in Johnny’s head or more explicitly made a bluff.

SADD piles into the thread clown-car style and it’s awkward because some of them frame it like they’ve been there the whole time, which messes with everyone else’s actions and is therefore ignored. Also, the thread races along with no real reply from Bobby. RationalParanoia notes this and asks it slow down a touch. One issue thus far is that most of RP’s posts are focused only on Mark—Johnny hasn’t done anything in like a page of thread.

Jonathan laughed at this, and the fact that he knew nobody was actually going to shoot.

Oh, Johnny, how little you truly know.

Johnny tries to resolve the situation through diplomacy but this takes the form of another pretty lengthy speech peppered with insults. Then someone in the building with Mark actually opens up on Bobby. Everyone is shockingly reasonable about it, despite both Bobby and the shooter—Shane Rafferty—getting hit. Bobby proposes a ceasefire, Neil accepts, and Johnny goes inactive standing behind the barracks waiting for Mark to come out. Bobby Jacks shoots a bunch of people, the area gets DZed, and Help whisks Mark and Johnny off to be inactive killed.

...except, for some reason, Johnny gets adopted instead.

Looking at the first thread as a whole, inactivity aside, Johnny’s not half bad when we’re with him. Unfortunately, the thread moves a million miles a minute and he’s usually sidelined in favor of Mark, who’s honestly not as interesting to me. Also, the thread is a mess because it has fourteen handlers, a number running multiple characters, and basically all being competitive and jockeying for position OOC and IC. Johnny gets kind of lost and ignored amidst that. The one big personal flaw is that he makes a couple of awkward, overblown speeches that just don’t really gel with what else we see and know of him; I think they come from a desire to influence the scene and back Bobby down, but they’re the weak links in otherwise-solid posts.

We pick up with Johnny delivered into the capable hands of D/N, and a pretty new style of narrative. His first post under new management is a long one, acknowledging past events, explaining his separation from Mark, and pulling a sort of soft-reboot as Johnny muses on his inaction and resolves to do what good he can in his time remaining. He says a few words over a body, does some poetry, and catches us up on some of the island’s goings-on (especially re: the announcement gap and the Danger Zone situation). It’s good stuff, and we see a more introspective take on Johnny, yet one that is aware of and not at odds with his previous iteration.

Dawn rolls in and comes straight up to Johnny, writing out her situation and asking for help. Johnny’s post gently reminds the reader and Dawn that he’s huge, scarred, and covered in other people’s blood due to moving the bodies around. It’s well-handled for what it is, though what it is is a bit of recapping to work around a moment of narrative awkwardness. Dawn mentioning that she’s deaf is kind of the point where I’d like us to be reminded that Johnny only has one working eye, but I’m not gonna harp on that too much because Johnny’s stuff is otherwise very in touch with his profile, even the weird bits, and is treating them in a generally grounded fashion. I like that the voice in Johnny’s head criticizing him is Mark’s.

Noah Jacobs turns up and his stuff is pretty good too. I like that Dawn’s consistent in being absolutely unconcerned about strange dudes covered in blood. Johnny takes the lead, welcoming Noah but remaining cautious. He’s the voice of reason, the one who knows that stuff could get bad at a moment's notice and the one who has a plan in case Noah flips on them.

The thread rolls on. I’m not gonna recap it all again, just pull out some bits. Johnny thinks Lex kind of sucks because she tries to be an outcast on purpose; he notes that she’d judge him for being on the football team, and there’s some nice implicit judgment there because of course we know Johnny’s a major outcast too, even among his teammates. Johnny’s bad eye is finally mentioned (yay!).

Interesting note: Johnny’s specific story, The Everdreamer, seems to be an invention of D/N’s. It fits in nicely with everything that’s come before, gels well with Johnny’s vibe, and has been set up a few posts before it’s introduced properly. It’s so natural I always kinda assumed it was from his profile, maybe a quirky thing given a quick coat of realism paint.

Johnny’s post roasts the announcement a bit for slipping up and referring to BKA as monthly instead of daily. It’s funny, but probably better handled by PMing staff. Staff never fixed it, though, so I guess Danya’s goof is canon.

Johnny freaks a little at Noah freaking about Lex winning BKA, but he freaks even more when he reads Dawn’s proposal that they hook up. It’s awkward, and Johnny’s narrative sells that well, but also the pair do have some actual chemistry. It actually goes down better from Johnny’s direction than Dawn’s, I think, because Johnny’s actions and reactions are pretty consistent and without the context of Dawn’s past threads it’s merely abrupt and jarring rather than also feeling sorta questionable on a motivations level. Still needs to have like twelve hours of time-skip, though.

Johnny says they’ll go anywhere but the graveyard, which makes it kind of funny that their next thread is in the graveyard. He also has a moment when he hears Neil Sinclair is dead, which is good because it reminds us they met. Somehow, half a thread after, that feels like ages ago. I think it’s because Johnny has the classic very long V3 posts going on, but he wears it well; they’re interesting top to bottom and it’s rare that anything feels unneeded.

Johnny gets big points for deciding to fill Dawn in on as many deaths as he can remember, even knowing she may not like what she hears. This goes back to a similar thing in V5, when some characters made a pretty different choice (which was also an interesting arc!), but Johnny’s decision here speaks of respect for and trust in Dawn.

Everyone leaves. The thread, on the whole, is good. Johnny wears his adoption very well; his posts are aware of what came before and retool or reinterpret it where needed without coming across as full of contempt for it. Johnny is definitely more sensitive and rounded now, but the situation allows that; prior to this we’ve only seen him in a standoff with Bobby Jacks. Mark fades a bit here, and could maybe stand to come up once or twice more, but that’s a petty quibble. Awkward propositioning aside, “These Walls” is a good thread with three handlers bringing strong performances, and I’d say Johnny manages to be the standout, serving as he does as the medium through with the other two communicate and as the one with the most personal agency.

On to the graveyard.

The big problem with this thread, right off the bat, is it’s three things colliding. It’s an open thread with Morgan Ackland doing her thing, plus a chase scene with Riz pursuing Velvet Retsiloh, plus an arrival/death/Danger Zone deal for Team Johnny And Friends. All of this plays out more or less at once, such that Riz and Velvet have already entered the thread, acted and reacted, and left before Johnny is actually present. This pigeon-holes him into not really getting to have any impact on the proceedings, which sucks. Johnny’s narrative handles this with extreme courtesy, basically filling in the details in a way flattering to everyone else and letting him take the loss in a logical way as he totally fails to stop Riz from shooting at them. It’s a real change of pace from a lot of the more competitive elements of many V3 fight scenes, and while Johnny may not quite be living up to his nickname here he’s all the more relatable and human for that.

Dawn gets rolled and gets shot by Riz. It lands a bit weirdly in timing because Riz is gone by this point, and the announcement plays and Johnny’s post starts with that and there’s a lot of timing stuff/recapping/catching up going on. All the content is good, but it would’ve benefited from being spread across five shorter posts in a more logical order instead of two big ones.

A great little moment when Johnny realizes Dawn has been shot:

Of course she couldn't hear him. She was probably just grazed, as he was, and scared. He, he needed to just fix her up. That's what he did. He was a protector. He was proving his worth on this island, and he could not let anything hurt her.

A ton lives in just that little repetition of “he.” It tells us that Johnny’s just telling himself that, that he’s in denial but on some level he knows the real score and he knows things aren’t going well.

One thread left.

Johnny enters his last thread, “Everdreamers,” with a chunk of flashback, as he tells his father he got a scholarship and discusses the upcoming class trip. It’s a great bit of character-building, that adds little details about Johnny’s normal life, his family situation, and his relationship with Mark. This is pretty vintage D/N stuff, albeit in more embryonic form; one of his biggest strengths is pulling humanity and intrigue from seemingly-mundane scenes.

Dawn isn’t doing well. Johnny decides to try to help her, but doesn’t have a clue how to do so. This is great; first aid is complicated even if you are trained and the situation isn’t quite so high-stress. A fun little quirk: there’s a bottle of morphine in the kit because this is V3. I’m not quite sure when that changed (or if it was ever even an official component—I think in V1 maybe Hawley scrounged it up somewhere?) but it fits what we’ve seen in some other scenes and never recurs after V3.

Johnny realizes soon that Dawn is beyond help. He holds her, kisses her, and muses some on his book, which deals with death and imagines a happier ending. It’s good stuff, well set-up, and touching. Dawn passes away, her last words to Johnny incomplete, and his next post opens with a brief timeskip.

The body he'd seen earlier was that of Eicca Hietala and nearby was Clive Maxwell.

I had to go to the wiki to make sure Eicca was a real V3 character (the answer is yes).

He leaned back against a large boulder where, unbeknownst to him, a hero named Neil Sinclair had once decided he was going to beat this game and escape the island.

I’m not sold on this. It breaks Johnny’s PoV both directly (by stating what he doesn’t know) and indirectly (because he thinks Neil’s a dubiously-competent jerk). It doesn’t add much to the scene, either—just sort of shows that the handler has read up on the area, and kudos for that but the body catalog already made that point.

Johnny contemplates shooting himself, and comes pretty close, musing about his brother, about Mark, and about what Dawn would’ve wanted him to do. All of this finally gets him to put the gun down, but then he turns and sees he’s not alone, calling out to Lex before she actually appears. It makes for a very smooth transition, and is a nice piece of cooperation in a style that would become much more popular soon.

Lex quietly muses on her actions, tosses a quick line at Johnny, then empties a clip into him and splits. It’s interesting because in most of V3 it’d be another case of a competitive hit and run, but here it’s collaborative and mostly works well—my one nitpick is Lex’s narrative pushes her badness somewhat hyperbolically while at the same time not getting into why Johnny is “someone she considered one of the most royal assholes she'd ever met” which would be nice to know to contextualize her actions and I don’t think would hurt her villain cred. Anyways, this isn’t about Lex and she leaves immediately, smiling about what she’s done.

Johnny’s post starts with the same dialogue his last post ended with which is unnecessary. The actual depiction of his getting shot is really good, though. He has a sudden moment of realization and almost peace, a moment in which he assures himself that Lex won’t win, that people like her and Riz are weak (to his credit, he doesn’t guarantee himself that Riz won’t win).

Noah turns up and has a really nice bit of internal conflict about whether or not to take the late-game player turn. He assures himself somewhat uncertainly he won’t do it, and stumbles upon the scene just in time to see Lex gun down Johnny. There is a slight bit of awkwardness because Lex’s one post in the thread has her shoot Johnny, then leave uninterrupted, assuring herself Johnny can’t shoot at her. Then Johnny’s post has him shoot at her (but miss horribly). Then Noah’s post has him come in and yell at her before she leaves and before Johnny shoots at her. This progressive retconning is distracting because each post changes what we know about what has happened and none of the changes are, to my mind, of vital enough importance to be worth that price.

Johnny looked at him, realizing suddenly how he'd probably looked to Dawn when he'd bumbled over to her trying to save her just moments ago.

Minor continuity thing but it was actually hours ago due to the timeskip in Johnny’s last post.

Johnny’s death is good. It’s slow, it’s painful, and yet it’s also somewhat ruminative and peaceful in a way that feels earned. Also, because I didn’t really mention it earlier, after Dawn’s death the voices Johnny hears start to change, in a way that kind of implies it’s her voice too. That’s a nice touch, especially as it’s never made explicit, just hinted more and more until the very end where the voice echoes her last writing to him. It’s a good death, and I think a big part of why it didn’t do better in BDA (though it got some nods) was that it was up against Dawn, which Johnny also really helped sell. That said, for my money, I like Johnny’s end better (and that’s not a knock on Dawn’s, either).

On the whole, would I recommend Johnny Lancer? Absolutely! He’s not the best character I’ve ever read or anything, but he and Dawn have a nice, tight little arc, and his writing is routinely strong. His story has focus, his character has direction and nuance, and he has real chemistry with his threadmates, most of whom are worth reading themselves. You can probably skip Sound and Fury honestly, but it’s not that bad to read and gives a nice tour of some of V3’s big faces. I’d say my biggest bugbear is that Johnny’s story feels like a Day 1-5 story, but that’s V3 and characters joining the game at the halfway point for you. My biggest regret in getting rolled both Johnny and Dawn is now nobody else is gonna get assigned them too.

Gonna call it there and not take another at this time; I have some V6 reading/thoughts I promised people.

could I get a reroll? I'm thinking of doing some reading and I might be re-invigorated to rejoin if I get a reroll

i have a kid here apparently

[retracted]

another kid bls

I guess this means I have to finish Brad

Brackie: Ivye Dewley
Mara: Arty Williams

So! Ivye!

[+] Ivye

Her profile is….something. Bog standard v1-3 crazy, born an albino (yet has perfect black hair???) to a crazy mother and her aunt and uncle raised her alone and never let her go outside because albino. Her advantages put her friendliness as a positive (?). Her profile is full of Life Goals, go read it for yourself

Pregame is her going to the library and minorly spooking the librarian while looking for a vampire book. It’s only 3 paragraphs long. I miss when pregame was this length and not 20 threads

Ivye’s in-game is what everybody knows her for so lets get to it:

Ivye ends up at the island’s jailhouse, thinking about how humans were “but organic sacks of fluid with a frame” and contemplates how the jailhouse was her playhouse. She abandons all her belongings except for the packed essentials, which in this case are several dresses, a change of shoes, a novel, and her favourite poppet. Ivye would be useless in a zombie apocalypse and she would be in denial of this fact. She calls her grenades “Dark green canisters of malevolent destruction”. She also muses on how she needs something better for close combat. She then muses about how she would give Danya the show of a lifetime, but only at night because the sun would roast her, because, y’know, albino. She also calls herself a vampire.

Next thread she plans against a surprise attack in the jungle, only we know there’s no surprise attack because this is a oneshot with her reiterating how much she loves gore and violence.

She finally comes across people at the lookout tower, and it’s a big-ol’ fight including Charlie Burchman, Keith Jackson, and Others. She gets turned on by the violence and the voices in her head tell her to Kill. Contemplating how much she hates people, she throws a grenade at them. The narrative takes a minor turn into sardonic aimed at Ivye herself, exemplified by the fact it kind of mocks her for thinking she’s better than everyone while also mocking her bad grenade throw, although it snaps back into “Ivye is great” by the end unfortunately. Then reality warps for a bit because Izzy/Keith see the grenade roll into the scene and run away but by the time it gets to Madison/Charlie it’s flying through the air, lands in Charlie’s mouth and blows him up? Maybe it hit a ramp on the ground. She gets excited over the fact she’s killed somebody and then goes to barricade herself in the lookout tower, only to get shot at by Bobby Jacks from outside. She then runs downstairs and hides under a bed?????? I don’t think you thought this through Ivye Dark’ness Ember Raven Dewley. The rest of the scene is Ivye hiding under a bed while nothing happens on her end or Bobby’s end - she thinks about killing her classmates a bunch? Then Megami comes in and announces that they need to clear out because it’s a danger zone, and everyone does.

It’s after this thread that Ivye goes inactive and is taken over by Megami, who repeats Ivye’s last thread by throwing a grenade at a group including Izzy/Keith/etc, except this time she doesn’t even stay around. Megami is a good handler who manages to keep the horni ghosts at bay and keeps Ivye consistent to her previous characterisation, which isn’t hard but I guess is Notable as far as inactive adoptions go.

After running from her second ‘nade attack, she ends up at the barracks looking to avoid the deadly burning overcast, only to overhear Julie Mikan and Adam Dodd doing their thing. She waits until Julie leaves and then plots to kill Adam Dodd so the terrorists would give her a BKA weapon. Unfortunately for her, Adam notices the grenade and jumps out the window, and all the while Gabriel Theobaldt has snuck up behind her and is about to decapitate her with a sword. Fortunately in her deathpost she avoids that grizzly fate by rolling out the way - unfortunately Megami deviats from that whole "consistent adoption" thing and Ivye starts monologuing and calling them “terrans”, before being shot by Adam and accidentally unleashing a grenade during her death throes, which ironically ends up killing Gabriel and earning Adam a BKA. Womp womp.

In Conclusion:

Ivye's your pretty standard v2-3 premade w/ an overwrought melodrama backstory and an obsession with gore and murder, news at 11. That said, she's at least a consistent and established crazy, and jojo even has a sprinkle of sardonic in there at points that shows he's in on the joke rather than making TEH COOLEST GOFF EVAR!!!!! That also being said she barely interacts with anyone else, goes inactive after three threads and gets adopted by Megami, who puts another weird layer of crazy that's slightly inconsistent and takes away the little she really had going for her. Could have been much worse but not a recommended read either way.

Another!

henlo another shortboi

[+] Arty Williams

Profile: Even for V3 profiles, this profile is rather short. It doesn't really say much too. Like, this is the hobbies and interest section lmao

Hobbies and Interests: Nobody's really paid enough attention to the young man to find out. All he seems to do is sit in a corner of the library or hallway, reading.

But basically Arty is a loner that was bullied and learns a lot through reading and stuff. Like, there's super vague allusions to what he's learned, such as basic knowledge of some martial art and stuff, but the profile reads as lowkey edgy. Like, because of his bullying, he 'no longer fears death' and there's also this from the disadvantages section.

His survival chances are only lowered by his inability to kill. The violence does not sicken him, Williams has become desensitized to that through his own experiences.

So yeah! No pregame so we're moving straight into island..............Sound and Fury...................

Game: He only exists in two pages of this thread though and I've read through the entire thread once I've paid my dues so I'm not rereading the previous pages.

Also,

True, he could be killed on sight. The limping, starving young man would not look like a threat, but if they were hungry enough, he would look like a meal. Arthur himself had been made to eat the flesh of another, his choice between survival and starvation. I ate his body, and drank his blood... like a barbarian... No, barbarians defeated their foes. Arthur was no barbarian. He was no predator. He was a vulture, picking up after the victories of others.

yallllllll this is from his opening post!!! they give you food and water for a reason!!!!!

Also a secret source has informed me that blood does not hydrate you and can in fact make you throw up if you drink too much of it so there's that.

I feel this attempt at showing Arty having already gone through hell on earth lands weird because there's not enough build-up. Like, we're introduced to him already having resorted to cannibalism, having a sprained ankle, and it's like 'What happened to him??????' Like, did he lose his supplies???? Did he get robbed when he woke up????? Also you can go two weeks without eating so he did not need to eat people!!!

Buuuut there's really not much to say here. Like, he stumbles in all pathetic and stuff, is ignored by half of SADD at first but then he goes 'oh i have a cellphone!!' and neil and dominica are like 'oh sweet' and they let him in, and then Bobby Jacks takes some guy hostage. And Arty, who has been established as some sort of survivalist, I guess, this pathetic loner who has been beaten down by the world, suddenly gets struck by a strong urge to help the hostage. So, he literally throws himself at Bobby, and Bobby shoots him in the head. Like, this hero turn really feels like it comes from nowhere, even if it's mentioned in the profile that he used to be helpful and that he doesn't want to kill.

Like, the problem here is Arty's story only exists in two pages of the thread Sound and Fury, so he kinda feels like a summary of himself. And there's not enough build-up to justify the turns his story does take. It almost feels like he was only created to provide SADD with a cellphone.

Overall, like, Arty is a super short read, so he's not gonna take too much of your time if you decide to read him, but I can't recommend him. His characterization is rather inconsistent and there's just too little meat on the bone, so to speak.

Next kid please!

gimme a drink, bar-tendah