Looks like Samaya Boen-Hilstrand doesn't have a lengthy journey on the island. As a matter of fact, her pregame threads more than double the number of
ingame threads. That would perhaps explain why I don't remember her, but that's fine, since it means that I won't go in with any presuppositions.
Going off the profile, what we can glean about Samaya is that she's a fan of the arts. And in fact, that's what we find her engaged in with her first pregame thread. She seems to be confident and proud of her work, and she also has very little qualms about undressing in front of her classmates. I don't have any interesting lines to pull out because her lines are mostly small talk and talking about stuff relating to her current life. There is a sweet little moment where she gets in close to Roman Jackson to distract from two other students asking each other to the prom, and this shows her tendency to talk a lot when she's on a roll. It's too bad that I don't really see that in the rest of her pregame threads, because she's got this bubbliness to her that would have been neat to see more of.
Moving right along, I suppose, the next thread opens with another discussion of Samaya's style of dress. There's a running theme where she wants to dress more boldly, but she keeps herself modest because she wants to adhere to the dress code. It's an interesting quirk. The main interaction in this thread is her mulling over a math problem with Maria Santiago. Once again, not a strong read. She's just kinda nice, but Arscapi does do a good job of communicating that she's not the best at math. That's something.
Now we're off to the prom, and she's here with Roman from the first thread. They grab a table and occasionally have small talk while this giant thread's going all over the place. I can see why the V7 prom is an entire forum all to itself, since this thread where everyone's dancing all at once is chaotic and hard to keep up with. She wanders around the thread and mostly just talks about her family. I'm not asking for any kind of big disruption or the like, but there's nothing to latch onto with this. It's just backstory-ing, which has a good point in itself, but is kind of a drag to binge-read. Plus it doesn't give the other participants much to go on as a response prompt.
Moving on from the prom, Roman and Samaya are bowling together and continuing to have a good time. She's joking back and forth with him and there's a bit more spice to it. One line in particular jumps out at me:
She sat down next to him and adopted a bad Southern accent, "Why Mr. Jackson, I do declare you are a true gentleman," she giggled to herself dropping the accent. "Somehow I don't believe you, but by all means let me see this brilliant plan in action," she said motioning to the lane.
Like, there's something here, she's really cheery and sweet at times. It's not all bad. But unfortunately, this thread doesn't last long.
Yet another classroom setting to round us out. And once again, she's just helping another classmate with a homework problem. She's a bit underwhelming here, but that's comparing her to Jimmy Brennan who does all the things and quirks it up like very few V4 kids can. She's a pretty normal kid and as a result, she tends to blend in to scenes sometimes.
Regardless, we are out of pregame. It's island time. And she's just kind of annoyed because of her poor choice in shoes. She hears a noise, she calls out to the noise and it's a panicking Felicia Carmichael, who she responds to with a "Hi." Even reaching into her bag and pulling out a firearm barely phases her. She just quips about it without any real fear or hesitation. When Felicia asks for her gun, she doesn't question Felicia's motives or whether it's a good idea. She just does it. Nearby noises don't startle her, she doesn't try to comfort her obviously scared friend...where is the spice she had in pregame? There was something there and now it's just really dry and bland.
Okay good, we start her death thread with her singing. This is something, but it's all there is. Everyone in her hastily-assembled group wants to sleep, so she volunteers to stand guard aaaaaaaand she gets bit by a snake. Now, having had the benefit of first aid classes, I know that a snake bite isn't often fatal. It's like 1% or less of snake bites or something. But nope, she just keels over and slowly dies of poisoning. She doesn't even panic at the end, just being like "Oh, huh, I feel woozy" and collapsing.
Final Analysis: There were the makings of a sweet, cheery character here, but that was all Samaya was. Even in circumstances where she should have been afraid or uncertain, she was joking around and acting sure of herself. Then she just drops dead without ceremony, her death even being narrated in a clinical manner without any drama or gravitas. As a result, I give her a score of blah out of 10. Not bad, but not great. Just kind of there.
I'm ready to go again, commander! Give me another assignment!
