Survival Of The Fittest

Oooh fuck yes into this one.

Intentionally not listing Daria until she dies, as my feelings for her are going to vary pretty wildly depending on how everything goes down.

[+] since everyone else is doing one I guess I will do it too

12. David Meramec

David and Simon's profiles are the ones I was probably proudest of going into V4, which is why I find it faintly fascinating that they end up being my weakest V4 characters. When I wrote David, I had only one basic concept: I liked the idea of him hurtling from thread to thread. I threw him into the game with literally zero plans attached to him, and just wanted to see when he'd become. Unfortunately, the answer is, "Not much": his central conceit of roaming from thread to thread doesn't take him very far, and he dies without accomplishing much in one of my feebler attempts at an ending. Some of the traits I used in David I would reuse with Tyler, to mixed reception.

11. Simon Grey:

I said above that David and Simon's profiles were the ones I was proudest of going into V4, in very different ways. David was a well-rounded character with a more-expansive pre-game who I wanted to organically grow as circumstances warranted. Simon, by contrast, had a specific aim from the outset: he would be, very self-consciously, a hero, and would enter the game as such. Circumstances sort of neutered my intentions for the character (though his influence on Raidon continues to exert an effect throughout the game), and I do love the dual circumstances of his death: he gets his heroic, noble last-stand against a big-name villain, but one of the people he died protecting betrays and kills the other. I think it's sort of a meta comment on SOTF as a whole?

Bonus fact: Simon Grey/Naoko Raidon/Mirabelle Nesa are my default RPG characters (to the point that my Pokemon Trainer is usually Simon and his rival is usually Raidon, and in Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and other RPGs my different characters are usally Simon/Raidon/Mirabelle)

10. Tom Swift:

Tom is the closest thing to a self-insert I've ever done (I moved some grief trauma stuff to earlier in my life and played around with the idea of what it would be like if I coped with my grief with substances rather than therapy), and I really enjoyed writing parts of him. But I think doing a self-insert may have been kind of impossible for me? I think I kept trying to second-guess what parts of my writing were wish fulfillment, or self-deprecation, or unrealistic. There are parts of his dialogue I really like (his death post, in particular, and his first and last threads)

9. Xavier Contel:

Parts of Xavier were the most fun I've had writing a character. I basically turned all of my nerdy qualities up to 10 and wrote a character who embraced my full nerd/weeaboo side. Every reference Xavier drops is from a piece of media that's important to me (I have a dumb ability to encode narrative information into my head, including quotes, and never lose it), and I enjoyed his interactions across the aboard. There's no part of Xavier's story I don't like, but he never found his group, and so I never fully found my groove with him.

(WEIRD SIDENOTE: David, Simon, Xavier, and Tom are all characters who take big chunks of their personality from mine, so the fact that I'm not as-proud of them is probably a weird psychological reveal? On the other hand, they're also characters whose big failure seems to be how I misuse them. Anyways)

8. Eliza Luz

The concept of the Luz family in general is something I'm very proud of, and it produced a lot of strong characters. Lizzie is actually one of those characters, and I enjoyed writing her quite a bit. But as is a constant problem for me, I never quite managed to put her where she needed to be. Working with NAFT was the closest I ever got her to really shining, and I think if I could have found the right characters for her to bounce off of she could have been something special. But from beginning to end, she never quite manages to land. The fact that she ranks this high on the list is probably a credit to how much I enjoyed writing her, even through my failures to use her appropriately.

7/6. Karen Idel:

So while writing this list, I made a discovery: my list is largely determined not by how I feel about the quality of my writing, but by the quality of the RPs these characters were involved in. Karen and Terra are roughly tied for me, probably because they were both characters whose endings were largely pre-determined, and who I was heavily involved in OOC planning to make those endings work. Karen was also the victim of some disruption that was not her fault (given how densely interwoven the narrative was, the V5 board shutdown really screwed with the escape group). Her group had some strong scenes even with that disruption, and I was fully prepared for both the possible success and the probable failure of her attempt. All-around, Karen is probably my best work in V5.

7/6. Terra Johnson:

The fact that Terra's tied with Karen is ENTIRELY because of Children of Cain, in which some other fabulous handlers bring their own fabulous characters to the mix and the resulting clusterfuck feels like it gives every character a chance to shine. Terra's got some character concepts I'm kind of proud of and the planning that went into it means every character gets a chance to shine in a way that feels organic and clicks together in a beautiful, dynamic way. I think Karen is the stronger of the two characters overall, and I had more total fun writing her, but thus far in V7 I have not matched the highs of planning Children of Cain with everyone. Kami, Brackie, Murder, and Ryuki brought the thunder.

5. Alex Tarquin

Big surprise, my melodramatic, metanarrative-building villain managed to rank pretty high on my list. Alex's last name comes from an Order of the Stick villain (first name Tarquin) whose whole gimmick is that he uses his awareness of the fantasy medium he's part of to build his plans, and the seed of that idea--of being cognizant of one's villain status, and using it for a larger purpose--is what I wanted to achieve with Alex. As I developed Alex, that idea got played with a little: not just villainy as its own purpose (independent of winning the game) but villainy as a coping mechanism, self-consciously adapting the tropes of a stereotypical villain to live with guilt and suffering. Alex could have been unbearable, but fortunately he got a chance to play off strong characters (I owe Toxie a huge debt, as Alex's repeated clashes with Crowley really helped define the character) and grow from there. Walking the line between "unrepentant killer," "gentleman blood knight," and "scared theater kid playing pretend" was really fun.

4. Tyler Lucas

I believe Tyler may be one of my more-unpopular characters, and I understand why. Tyler was a big experiment on my part, and sort of gag on the nature of SOTF. I think a fair number of handler's don't just take into account what another character is saying or doing, but what they're thinking (I myself do this all the time). On one level, this makes sense: words, deeds, and thoughts in-post add up to an impression our characters might also get (so, for instance, if a killer is pretending to be sympathetic while plotting our deaths, we may notice something off about their actions, or if a character seems gruff and dangerous but their private narrative is panicked we might pick up an edge of fear). But in Tyler's case I wanted to make a character that other people would actually have to work to understand: big, dangerous, violent, and terse, but with more going on than most people might see (he got a chance to show more of this as the narrative went on). There's stuff I never got to do with the character (for instance, one big plot hook that I never got to expand on is that Tyler actually really likes the Pattons, and actually had a crush on Eliza), but writing him was a blast, and I feel like I enjoyed the threads I got to do with him.

Tyler also has one of my biggest SOTF regrets attached to him: he didn't get the death he needed. Tyler really needed to clash with one of his recurring enemies to close his arc properly, but Travis Webster was sadly unavailable.

3. Mirabelle Nesa:

Mirabelle suffers a bit from being handled by a 19 year-old man who had some issues writing women, but whatever the weaknesses of her author, they're more than made up with by the quality of her RP partners. I went in with very few plans for Mirabelle (besides being "aggressive Hiroki Sugimura") and in this case my complete lack of plans was amply rewarded: by Hollyquin with Garrett (establishing a rivalry that could grow as the characters grew), by story with Liz Polanski (whose radical act provided a focus for Belle's story that was otherwise missing), by Samantha (who provided a moral conflict without a clear solution), and by Murder with Baines (who gave Belle the perfect tragic ending). Belle was fun to fight and is still fun to reread, and there were times when I was writing her that I was having so much fun I bragged to my friends about it.

2. Tara Behzad:

Tara has earned her position on this list only because of the grief she caused various members of staff at various stages of her development. Moving on.

...But seriously folks, Tara's profile is absurd, and that's the toned-down version after the special-snowflake nonsense I submitted to BetaKnight for pre-game. I knew Tara was going to be complicated, because I was trying to do a lot of things with her character. She was intentionally supposed to be a throwback to pre-made players from previous versions, which required putting things in her profile I knew were dicey as a misdirect. She was supposed hatch and execute a complicated, harrowing, and dangerous escape attempt entirely on her own, with only her own resources, which required her to have an expansive past. She was supposed to reference huge swathes of SOTF, including my own work. And, with all of those narrative functions done, she had to function as a character worth reading.

I think I succeeded at that goal, though it was a close thing. I wrote The Inferno in what I swear to God felt like a fugue state (back when I thought V6 might be my last version). Most of the names high on this list are here because of how much they were to RP as and with other people, and there are some solid RP sections in Tara's story, but honestly she's here because I think I tried something difficult, struggled, and pulled it off to my personal satisfaction.

1. Naoko Raidon

Raidon remains the character I'm proudest of four versions later, and the one I had the most fun writing. This comes from a combination of factors, but the main one is this: I achieved my fundamental goal with Raidon (a character who is empathetic, has a staunch moral compass, and is a full-fledged player in spite of these factors) in a way that dramatically departed from my original goals thanks to the intervention of other characters. Raidon was intended to have a grudging, agonized descent into full-fledged villainy (to the point where I had rough sketches for him joining the Arthro Task Force if he happened to win V4), with potential to encounter Simon and either submit to being killed or cement his villain turn by killing him.

But then there were two threads back to back: The Quiet Lives of Baron Saturday, with story's Mizore Soryu; and No Turning Back, with sunnybunny's Scott McGregor and Jonny's Julian Avery. Scott sent Raidon down the path I'd planned, but Mizore and Julian changed EVERYTHING about the character, by giving him people to work off of in a way that just felt incredible. When I think of V4, I legitimately have a mental image of Julian, Raidon, and Mizore running around yelling at each other and constantly stopping to save and protect one another.

There are so many good moment in V4, far beyond the ones I'm involved in with Raidon, and part of why I enjoyed it so much was that I think Raidon fit into the mold of what was happening in V4 in a way that gave characters who interacted with him a lot to work with, and that gave me as a handler a lot to do, react to, and change. But having to explore Raidon's core dynamics by having him constantly argue with an antihero vigilante and a staunch pacifist (and, later, having him and Fioriboy's Maxwell Lombardi have such a profound ongoing effect on one another) made him into something far different that I intended, and what is probably still the most fun I've ever had in any version.

WARNING - Horribly long as I am want to do. But I've never really truly examined my charries before in a real ranking so why not?

11) Badass Johnny Lancer - v3 (Adopted)
Badass Johnny doesn’t come in last necessarily because I hate him. I know I’ve joked about him and how cheesy he was (still is) and his WUUUV with Dawn (still cringy!) and how overwrought and BDA-baity his death was (again still is!) but… OK, I still don’t hate him. Really. Look, I was young, he was a fun first character, he taught me some stuff on what to do and what not to do. Whether I’ve taken those lessons to heart is debatable but whatever.

Looking back, it’s kinda funny that he only survived three threads with me. Seems way longer for some reason. So his story’s also pretty damn short and rushed, which is maybe why he comes across as so one-note.

10) Carly Jean Dooley - v4
Speaking of short and rushed characters, yup. Carly was at least created to have some character development and a story on-island and she sort of did. But she was also created as someone who would almost certainly die early on, and she did. So it’s not like her arc is particularly good or subtle. She’s over-the-top and overwrought, and not in a great or memorable way. But at least she does have some fun moments. That said, while I may defend in some sense the concept of fodder characters especially in earlier games, the truth is that they’re never actually gonna be that great.

Also looking back, she has some of the goddamn worst thread titles I’ve ever come up with (I have a side obsession with thread titles even with my always stuffing song lyrics in them in lieu of anything original, and I seriously want to go through and rank mine some time >_>) But anyway, “She Bopped” is obviously a fucking stupid abomination and I’m sorry to this day, but “Pearl and Destiny”? Where did I get that from, what the fuck does it mean and how does it relate to her or anything at all?

9) Nikki Nelson-Kelly - v7 (unfinished)
Ughgghghs. Yeah. Nikki is obviously my biggest SOTF failure given she’s the only one I totally abandoned without her being even rolled or about to die or anything. And I’m so thankful she was taken care of even if she only lasted a couple threads longer. And at least my leaving was way more due to real-life time issues than stupid can’t-write fuckery, but still. She can’t rank too highly, and even if I’d continued with her I doubt she’d move more than a few spots upwards, although we’ll never know, which is why she has to be so low. I rhyme like so.

Nikki’s biggest issues are first that in a version as connected as v7, she really stands out as a last-minute insert that I didn’t put enough thought or planning into. Her lack of pregame hurts her way more than it ended up with my v5 and v6 charries. Moreso, unlike them, I hadn’t yet established her enough with myself yet. I wanted to play around with a character using nothing but gross positivity to cover up much deeper and complex premonitions of doom, but I hadn’t made Nikki deep enough in my own mind to do so. Her backstory is totally thrown together and so there’s not enough of it to draw upon. So yes, she was fun to write and hopefully to read. I’m a good enough writer to get away with it in a sense (he said hopefully). But she never coalesced into that meaning anything, and my story with her ends halfway through.

8) Ricky Fortino - v4
Nikki and Ricky are actually pretty similar in those ways, and yes I rhyme again. Ricky’s doubtless not as well written as Nikki (he shouldn’t be, given, y’know, I’ve hopefully gotten at least somewhat better in the past freaking decade). But he at least has is written all the way through and has ending, even if SOTF_Help stepped in for his final post. Like Nikki, he’s fun to read. Everyone who’s read Ricky has told me they really loved his voice, and I agree. Ricky has a great, fun, narrative voice, even if it’s immature and probably too insensitive looking back.

The thing is, he can’t really rank any higher because that’s ALL he has. He was created because I grew up in a Canadian suburbia neighbourhood with a ton of Italian and Portuguese kids, and he’s an homage to them that probably verges into parody a bit. Oh well, I had fun with it. But beyond that voice, he’s a shallow character who doesn’t really grow or do anything, especially on the island, where he doesn’t have a storyline and so wanders around riffing on how fucked up things are for a lot of threads. Then he just goes into hallucinatory crazy-ville without much prior justification and these many years later I’m still not entirely sure why. My guess is that, like Carly, I knew that Ricky was doomed to go out early. So by the time we got to the halfway point he’d already survived longer than I’d expected or really wanted him to and was waiting until I finally got rolled again and as swap meat for Andrea. So I just decided to go wacky till then, which stands out even more, since I wasn’t using his descent into madness to make any kind of larger point or story about anything. You can make a character who doesn’t change, but if they also don’t really plot, they’re just there.

7) Aiden Slattery - v6 (adopted)
What the hell? How haven’t I put him last? I’ve done nothing but complain about how I regret adopting and waking him. He was hell to write and I couldn’t find his voice and dragged things out. I still can’t believe I won BDA for shamelessly and deliberately ripping off a ten year old movie because I didn’t have any other ideas. And all those are still true… but actually he’s not nearly as bad as I thought in retrospect.

It’s weird in a sense because unlike other characters I raged about not being able to find the voice for, Aiden doesn’t show it as much now that I look back. And I think the reason for that may be for me and me alone, but I think my writing issues forced me into a much more minimalistic writing style than I usually use. His posts are short, succinct, and yet still read a bit fun to me. And he does very little, but that actually makes him work a bit AS LONG AND ONLY AS you look at him as who he really was: a support character to Melanie and Serena. He’s a sidekick, a below-the-line day player, and while that probably means he’s not great to read on his own, he kinda deepens the story as a whole. And as we’re all driving our own characters in SOTF since the days of fodder and same-handlercest have largely gone by the wayside, that’s kind of unique. So I dunno if you’d have fun reading him or not, and I don’t know if it was his original handler’s intention, but I’ve gotten over my disgust for what I did with him, and I’m happy with that. I mean, not happy enough to put him any higher than this, god no. He doesn’t deserve that.

6) Eris Marquis - v3 (adopted)
Oh Eris. Badass Johnny might have been my first, but Eris is more my v3 legacy. And I still stand by her in ways. Even though I think I cleaned her up from her original concept and owe a lot of credit to her first adopted handler for that, she remains very v3 to her core. And even though v3’s back half was where the site culture truly shifted, it also still couldn’t help but be v3. So Eris is shootouts and fight scenes where we describe what might happen next, and awful awful AWFUL songposts featuring metal songs with cheesy lyrics she’d never listen to if her life depended on it. And her speeches are ginormous and her description shows that I clearly hadn’t even tried to master the art of subtlety or restraint. You could probably cut her word count in half and not lose much.

Despite all that, I can’t regret much. After all, she was a product of the time and the site and of my writing as well, and she left the game an accomplished character. Her deathpost was… a thing, like much of her I still like it in some ways and cringe at my attempted self-importance in others. It’s over-the-top, but once again, it’s the version and I’ll defend it as working. I certainly learned a lot more about writing through Eris than I did through Badass Johnny; she allowed me to do some really fun stuff with other very strong writers and made me feel like I was an accepted member here. On a personal note, she’s also the first female character I think I’d ever actually worked with as a POV character, and so really drew me out of my young comfort zone.

5) Imraan Al-Hariq - v4
HAPPY RUGGA?! OK, so Imraan was something. Me being younger and angstier, he almost wanted me to quit the site at some point. I’ve talked about before how I could never find his voice, and looking back I still don’t think I did. And for someone for whom that voice is the most paramount part of his character building, it’s a bitter pill to swallow indeed.

But I’ve also mellowed on him in that sense. ‘Cause it’s kind of like, okay, I wasn’t 100% happy with him, so what? And accepting that is part of maturing as a writer. His prose is a bit clunky and ponderous, but hey, so is he. And he’s part of some good moments and doesn’t actually slow down as much as I thought he had. No, I didn’t really want him to to become the godly player hunter when I designed him, but since I didn’t have any other better idea to go with, that’s on me and I just sort of let him go that way, and I’m glad of that. And I do think that he presented some good menace as the big looming avenger. Also, I don’t actually regret handing off his death as much as I did, since it’s exactly how I was going to kill him off unrolled anyways, and it was better to let him die at a natural point then to have him slog around for another 10 kids or however long it would’ve taken for him to be rolled and then having him get randomly shot by Ema Ryan or whatever.

4) Jesse Jennings - v5
Now we’re getting into the list of the kids that are my real successes. I’ve seen Jesse mentioned as my most underrated or overshadowed character. GUESS WHAT I GOTTA AGREE. He didn’t accomplish much (which I am actually happy with) or interact with enough people over his stay on the island (which I do wish I could have done more), but I feel he made the most of what he was given. Granted, Jesse wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. He’s right in my wheelhouse of cocky smarmy kids, and in stark contrast to Imraan he’s probably the easiest kid I’ve ever written on this site; any frustrations I had with him circa v5 were far more due to plot than prose. And he was funnnn. He was the type of character who was fully formed not long after I'd first envisioned him, and that gave me a focus to the character and his arc from the get-go.

I did have a lot of plans with Jesse that didn't end up coming to fruition since the rolls did not enjoy having me around once we got to the halfway point or so. But I had at the least planned for that possibility and was always had an endgame I could go to with him. His death is still one of the faves I've ever done (really the big difference between my top 4 kids and the rest is that I was completely satisfied in retrospect with how their stories ended... or continued in one case), as it's something I'd had in mind since at least partly through v4. And I liked Jesse because I always knew he was doomed to failure, and I always know how he'd react to things. As with a lot of kids, he lost momentum in the crash which was too bad, but I thankfully had a bunch of good if sometimes low-key characters to work with in his threads (again, this is a consistent in my favourites).

3) Andrea Raymer - v4
The identities of my top 3 are not a surprise to me in the least. I knew exactly who they’d be, I knew they’d have no hope of being defeated in my very-subjective mind, and the only question was the ordering. Andrea’s here because v4. And she can’t be higher… because v4.

Oh man v4. Thank fucking god for v4, is all I can say. Because no matter how it’s thought of these days, there’s no way I could have written Andrea in any season but v4, there’s no way she could have worked in any season but v4, and somehow she did. Andrea was designed to be my SOTF magnum opus, and through a massive amount of luck, she actually ended up approaching that, just in a completely different way than I’d expected. She’s a character who’s still around, and I’ll always plan to go back and write more with her even if it takes me a couple years to do so.

But for me to have that success, that means I have to accept all the issues that come with it. Andrea has problems. She’s massively overwritten and verbose and delivers speeches ridiculous enough that the other characters riff on her for it. I decided halfway through her island journey to make songposts an integral part of her and they were introduced out of nowhere. She is a grotesque, obvious antihero flagship with pre-made advantages out the wazoo and I only managed to cover that up somewhat because Imraan was a false-flagship type character himself and because I was too incompetent or lucky to actually enact all my grandiose plans that wouldn’t have worked because she didn’t get into the right threads and because Liz Polanski and Ethan Kent got there first.

But despite that, I have a lot to still be proud of. Her character arc on the island manages to hit all the beats at all the right times. I somehow maneuvered her internal and external forces in exactly the way that worked for her. There was a ton of luck involved, as I said. She managed to team up with Allen Birkman, that beautiful dork, who became her perfect beleaguered sidekick that she absolutely needed, and I bruteforced JamesRenard to giving Allen all the right beats. When the escape hit, I raged and hated it, and then managed to wrap her story up in a fashion that was both ridiculously glory-hounding and yet perfect for her. And that allowed me to continue to do things with her for oh god years and years since then (with long hiatuses, but never mind that).

2) Deanna Hull - v5
So Andrea can’t really be any higher than 3rd, because her baggage and because she just wasn’t as well written overall as I was, y'know, younger and still had stuff to learn. But my top 2… I’unno how to really decide. What I can say is that my beautiful girl Dee ended up being the character I might be proudest of in SOTF. She’s the black sheep of my good kids in all the right ways.

Largely, I write in a certain fashion, which is why character voice is so important to me and why it’s usually what people mention when they like my writing. That’s because in general, I’m straightforward. I like it when action happens in a scene. Or discussion. Or SOMETHING. I like description. I like feeling and flashbacks to develop my kids. I like metaphor, but textual, not deep imagery and symbolism. I don’t read David Foster Wallace for fun. I skim through characters like Ilario Fiametta with an “uhhh, it’s well written but is all this NECESSARY” thought process. With Dee, I didn’t fully divert from myself, but I tried to explore some of this stuff in my own fashion. Her writing was way more flowery than I’m used to. She ruminates and broods. I dip a toe into all that fancypants writing stuff like motifs and meanings and see what comes out, and I liked what did.

And this works because Dee is unique as a character herself. I like to write jackasses and overconfident kids and see what happens when things go right and wrong for them. I like them to force the action. I write a lot of kids with intrinsic strengths and have them play on those. Dee is weak and warbling and worthless in her own mind, wanting to do nothing whatsoever, and her growth and self-discovery in the game still makes me smile to this day. None of this would’ve been possible without Kyran Dean of course, who provided the boy/girl partnership that stands to this day as by far my favourite. She did bog down a bit in the middle with the crash, and that’s too bad, but her story and character arc was so strong and ended up going about exactly as far and as well as I wanted it to. Even if she could have gone further (thanks RNG for rolling her like four times or something), she still finished at about the perfect time.

1) Kaitlyn Greene - v6
So of course to follow that up I needed to go in the complete opposite direction. I do wish Kaitlyn could have lasted longer and wrecked more havoc on v6, but ah well. For everything that I had for her and her entire story, she missed so few beats. Most people who’ve commented on her have said that she was just fun to read, and that by gum was the point. Like I said before, I like to at least try to make things happen with my characters. And one of my rules with Kaitlyn was that I wanted to ensure that something happened in every single thread, and with the exception of her aborted team-up with Vanessa Stone that petered out, I did. And even in that thread I got to have her poop in a bucket. Kaitlyn is all action. People in the cove? Flood that shit. People in the pub? Steal a bomb and claim it as your own. Make shit happen, and roll with it, and it was so much fun to do.

My other rule with Kaitlyn was that, oh man I was so sick of my assholish kids always being on the side of snarky good. Or at least neutrality. With Kaitlyn, I had a creed and that was no redemption whatsoever. And oh man did I love doing that. She is so joyfully ugly. She’s rude, she’s entitled, she belches and poops in buckets. She sputters out blatant lies at the drop of a hat to everybody she meets, about everything, and never gets called out on it. Her plans are the greatest and when they go to shit it’s everyone else’s fault. I even had her think the terrorist protein bars are delicious. Her idea of symbolism is thinking about the Walking Dead and realizing that Peter Pan sucked while a godawful objectivist kids book is the best thing ever. And at the end, when she has a chance to step back with her pleading friend, she instead tells a horrible racist joke. Oh man I loved it so much. Her death might have been a perfect blitzposting insanity session with Laurels and Alba (so amazing), but I had been dreaming of it for a long time before that and I was so happy to have it come to fruition just as I'd imagined. She's the character I have the least complains with, and had the most fun, so I guess for now she's gotta stick at the top of the list.

Whoops this turned out really super duper long! Oh no! Read it anyway or else

Not ranking Aurelien, Galahad, or Nanna-Fiora, as they're still alive!

[+] 28 whole characters, wow, amazing, cool

28) Amy Bachelor, V5 - Amy was not a bad character in concept; a super-massive fan of various forms of YA media and the like is a pretty solid launchpad for a character. She wasn't even bad in action, and if I was basing her solely off of that, she’d absolutely jump up several spots. The reason she’s last on this list is that she shouldn’t have ever existed. She’s an uncomfortably close insert of my best friend for years, who I had a pretty major crush on at the time of writing her, and so a lot of the things I wrote for her are just jarring and uncomfortable for me, personally, to read, especially because I was striving to be as accurate to the real person as possible. If I’d just taken the overall concept, or bits and pieces of the RL inspiration for her, then no doubt she’d be much much higher, but as it is… I don’t have many SOTF regrets. Amy is 100% one of them.


27) Aileen Borden, Second Chances V1 - I liked Aileen in v4 a lot, which was the major reason I decided to ask Kami if I could try my hand at her, whiiiich in hindsight, probably wasn’t the greatest plan in the world. OG Aileen had a strong story and voice and arc, while my version of Aileen.... I’m not overly dissatisfied with her voice. She just only lasted for three threads, and in those threads, really didn’t get to do much at all. That’s the big issue. She’s an alternate version of a good character, that is quite frankly worse than the original in every way, which pretty much defeats the purpose of Second Chances. If I could redo SC1, i almost certainly wouldn’t take Aileen on again, because I think she and Kami deserve better than what I put out.



26) Brennan O’Brian, TV1 - Brennan’s down this low solely because I think he’s the character of mine that’s showing his age the most. He has all the hallmarks of baby’s first character (thoughts in italics! Thoughts in italics and in Light Blue Text! Repeating every single line of dialogue spoken before him and slotting his own replies in between each one!), and the writing is, well, what you’d expect from a 13/14 year old attempting forum RP for the first time. Also he didn’t really get to do a whoooole lot? He has a number of threads where he’s just kinda, like. ‘Brennan was the nice and meek guy in the group’. I think I was overly attached to the fact he’s a genuine and awkward dude, so I was too afraid to make him stand out particularly? His team-up with Vincent is good, due to the fact they’re so dissimilar, as is him beating Zach to a bloody pulp for killing Ali, but those moments are too sparse to make the whole story ‘good’, y’know.


25) George Leidman, V4 - I’ve always been pretty down on George, and while I think some of it’s very much warranted, he’s…. Not as bad as I always think? He’s not fantastic - again, 13/14 year old Pippi was piloting him - but the fact that he actively attempted to change his ways after being barred entry from the boats, despite the fact there’d be no real benefit to him doing so? That was fun, I’m kinda proud of that (and hey, maybe it was the inspiration, deep-rooted in my brain, for Garren and Scott (but we’ll get to those guys later)). He’s also got a couple nice turns of phrase in the first thread I took him over for. The big, big issue - he appears right at the beginning of The Cavalry Arrives…. And doesn’t leave until the very last post. That’s so, so much time wasted that I wasn’t able to explore him turning his back on his murderous ways and trying to seek redemption while he still could, and he died in his next thread in fairly short succession, so. Missed opportunities really. Probably the character i’m considering most heavily for if a future SC occurs.


24) Bryony Adams, V6 - Bryony was a lot of pretty words, wrapped up in a whole lot of nothing, and with the benefit of hindsight, she should not have lasted for as long as she did. There’s a whole stretch of threads, pretty much from where she leaves the bridge to where she reaches the art room, where she does very little except be sad. And I’m fond of the writing I did for her! It’s just not a very absorbing journey. She’s kinda like a walking simulator game with great graphics, and that’s it. I was gonna say her pregame ended up better than her actual game but that’s a step too far, and too harsh on myself; she had two unfinished pregame threads, after all. For all I’m being down on Bryony… she had a really strong opening, with one of my favourite ways to wake any of my kids up thus far, I forgot how fun the thread where Al took potshots at the group was, and her mutual kill with Blair is still a thread I’m incredibly happy with. So that’s all nice!



23) Jonathan Roberts, Program V2 - Jonathan was… fine. There’s a few SOTF characters who you read through, and you’re having a fine time reading them, but once you’re done you can’t remember anything about them and have no real desire to go back over them again? I feel Jonathan exemplifies that best. He was attached to two much more dynamic and interesting characters in Marley and Ashley, and so played a supporting role for much of his existence; this isn’t a bad thing at all, but Jonathan’s personality was so, like, ‘generally pleasant’ that it meant nothing about his journey really stood out at all. Except for his death thread! Where he died because he finally decided to take charge for once and make a decision all by himself, and it came back to bite him in the ass! I’m a big fan of those, dramatic irony in death, and while Jonathan’s isn’t the best example of it by a longshot, I’d be lying if I said I was unhappy with it.


22) Roy Benson, Virtua - There’s a reason I brought Roy back for SC2, and that’s because he absolutely had a voice, a voice I knew I could capture, and one that unfortunately didn’t make its presence known for much of his original journey. It’s strongest in his first thread, and to a much lesser extent in his second, where he and Leo trade verbal blows with each other; he shows himself to be a generally decent dude with a short temper and little ability to control it, just watered down for similar reasons as with Brennan, in that I was too scared to push the envelope and be bold at times. His death sucks though; not the thread itself, Devil Nights turned out wonderfully, from what I can remember, with four people dying in a burning building. But Roy somehow manages to survive while he’s literally full of bullets and on fire long enough to have an overwrought, melodramatic internal monologue, and then survives even longer than that. Which is embarrassing, really.


21) Bunny Barlowe, TV2 - Bunny was a fun concept that I loved, and had a strong voice, and was fun to write for, and didn’t get to do anything that I wanted with her. This is a recurring theme with a bunch of the upcoming characters! Just call me Miss Consistent. Anyway, Bunny is very similar to Roy also, in that you can absolutely see what she would later become in SC2; bouncy, bubbly, full of pep and cheer, all surrounding a core that cared solely about her and was willing to make herself the star in any way possible. In many ways, the biggest shame about Bunny is that, like, that essence of her character fits the TV-universe so much better than the SC-universe. But I managed to make it work in SC, and didn’t in TV, so. She’s a fine read if you’re only taking the writing into consideration, possibly a pass if you’re looking at storylines and arcs.


20) Victoria Bellamy, Program V3 Prologue - I keep waffling back and forth as to where to put Victoria. The main problem is that she absolutely wouldn’t work in any other universe than Program. It’s doubtful that Program Prologue characters would be eligible for SC, but I can’t think of a way to bring her other to that world regardless. She’s almost a caricature in her fervent fanaticism for the American dream, believing herself wholeheartedly to be the picture-perfect American girl and anyone less than what she is to be not worth her time. Did I take her too far into the realm of stereotypes and caricatures? Possibly, but the key thing is, that’s exactly what she needed to be. She’s a scummy, utterly reprehensible person, and yet when Charlie kills her, there’s no real catharsis, because at the end of the day, she was just spouting a lie she’d been fed from birth. So, yeah, overall, I’m happy with Victoria - and major props to Toben and Elena for being excellent thread partners also.


19) Mia Rose, V6 - I originally had Mia several spots higher, but looking back… I think that’s almost entirely due to the strength of her death thread. Her pregame was fun, I got to do a bunch of fun things with her, including some cute prom stuff with Zee, and kicking Darius in the balls. Then on the island itself… Mia suffered, like the rest of my v6 squad, from plans that never came to fruition. I can’t remember the exact trajectory I was hoping for with Mia, but I pitched her as a killer a number of times, and for various totally valid and understandable reasons, didn’t get any of the kill rights. Because I was staking so much on getting those kills, she instead wandered around a bit, a reactionary figure rather than the action-y figure I wanted her to be. This is a PSA against trying to build your character’s entire island journey before it even begins!!! Don’t do it!!! Even her rationale for leaving Candice is super flimsy, and is obviously just a vehicle to separate the two of them in order to setup Mia’s death. But, fuck, dude. What a death. I think it’s easily my favourite death I’ve ever been involved in, DN and Zetsu were perfect to write with. It’s frantic, it’s tense, it’s unique, and it was just a massive blast to be a part of.


18) Stepney Cruz, V7 - Stepney’s big issue, which I feel is pretty evident, is a lack of direction. His starting thread was a completely open one, a ‘lets fuck around and find out’ kind of deal, and while it ended up a pretty good thread in the end, Stepney… kinda gets lost amongst the chaos. I had to very different ideas of where I wanted to go with Stepney; a Stepney who would actively try and play, and a Stepney who was evil in a much more manipulative, indirect manner. I… ended up going with neither of these in the end! And it’s really a shame he ended up so directionless, because he was a concept I adored, and I had a ton of fun with his voice in pregame, so I’ve got few problems with that half of his story. At the very least, his death thread came off great, managing to tie in his prosopagnosia and his decision to trust (there’s that dramatic irony again!) into his demise. Also into becoming a scarecrow. Now he’s outstanding in his field. Shut up Pippi.



17) Katana "Kat" Locke-Baldwin, Program V3 - Kat was a lot of fun, from concept to finish. Her entire deal is that she’s the ‘anti-Self Insert’, taking as many of my traits and facts about me and bits and pieces, and flipping them on their head (try and guess all of them!). And I also managed to name her Katana, and give a legitimate reason for doing so, which is probably my finest accomplishment on the site. When it came to the game proper, Kat had a plan, and a goal, one that I managed to carry out over her comparatively short time alive; that being, to try and scavenge as many weapons as possible and get rid of them, so the people who were playing couldn’t get to them. It wasn’t a very successful goal, in the end, most weapons being snatched up as soon as they were abandoned, and I’m not thoroughly convinced I managed to actually convey that was her goal either. But she was fun to write, and had some really good threads under her belt, including getting into a fight over her shitty guitar, and getting into a fight with marmite girl. She didn’t get along with many people!


16) Faye Xandora, Program V3 Prologue - I loved the Program Prologue a ton, and I think it has some of my best writing, period. Faye’s the second lowest of my crew, but that’s mostly because she had a little less dynamic of a personality than my other guys, and had help from some excellent thread partners. She was intended from the start to be a ‘burn bright, burn fast’ sort; someone who gets a very early kill, gets overwhelmed by it, and gets way, way in over her head. In that regard, she was definitely a success; working with Aloha and Elena for both kills was incredibly smooth and fluid, and I adored her partnership with Mo. There’s something about her that irks me that I can’t quite put my finger on, but that might just be the natural writer’s instinct of wanting to improve everything I touch.


15) Caitlyn "Katie" Agustien, V7 - Well, I put Katie into the game so that she could do better than her first out status in ReEvo. So, an overwhelming success right out of the gate! Katie was odd, because I feel she had some significant lows - she had a couple of pregame threads that weren’t bad but were just lowkey, and she’s part of a group in her first few island threads made up of good characters that didn’t really gel when put together - but her highs were reallly high. I loved writing the lingering sense of unease as to what Erika told her, culminating in her beatdown of Ty, and practically everything I wrote with Aura in regards to her relationship with Saffron made my heart feel good and warm. Their death thread still makes me sad, every time I read it.


14) Owen Kay, V5 - There’s an almost hilariously large amount of baggage with Owen; for those unaware, he was a self-insert before I realised I was trans, so you can imagine how offputting reading him nowadays is for me, especially his profile. I was never 100% satisfied with him, even at the time, yet I was also incredibly reluctant to hero or swap him out; similarly to Bryony, it’s just… real hard to do that to a SI, it turns out! Which meant he probably lasted longer than he had any real reason to. His death is far from stellar, it’s over in a flash with him getting shot and him bleeding out in the span of two posts. And if I ever abuse ellipses like I did in my attempt to replicate Owen’s nervous stuttering, you have permission to permaban me from the site. Yet with all that… I look back on him with a lot more fondness than I thought I would. He’s a good dude, just trying to do his best as the world keeps on kicking him. He gets less fragile and gains a greater sense of self as time goes on, yet it’s arguable whether that’s a good thing for him. He has a cute, odd-couple relationship with Aileen, one I regret not pushing further and blossoming into a fully-fledged romance. And I’ve seen a lot of different interpretations as to his arc, which all fascinate me, and which I think are all totally valid. I don’t think he’s going to be remembered as an all-time great character, not even within the scope of V5. But he’s a lot better than my memory tries to convince me he is.


13) Amelia Lennon, Virtua - Amelia follows a similar trajectory to Faye; a popular, cheerful, party girl who gets an early kill, and quickly spirals downwards from there. Amelia benefits from having a lot more threads to work with, and having quite a rollercoaster ride of emotions and mental states in her island… desert… Western Land From Mario Party 2 adventure. She goes from convinced the whole thing is just make believe, to watching her friend get shot right in front of her, to killing the first person she sees out of desperation and panic, to sheer regret and remorse, to never being able to forgive herself for that and seeing only one option out that wouldn’t harm anybody else. That’s a lot of stuff! I don’t really have much more to say than that; Amelia was just a really solid story that I had fun writing, and have very few complaints about.


12) Carlyle Shotton, Program V2 - My boy. My good boy. My beatnik boy, even though I specifically said he dislikes being called as such, even though he pretty clearly obviously is. Carlyle was chill, and Carlyle was calm, and true to the character, I absolutely just went with the flow when it came to Carlyle. I didn’t go in with any real plans for the guy, just to do what most made sense when he was confronted with it, and like Amelia, he ended up with a really solid story that I have few complaints about. He was true to himself, and loyal to his friends, and even after a confrontation turned deadly thanks to the rifle in his hands, I think he still came out of it looking pretty good. The fact he was also killed because he was so similar to the Carlyle that Robin knew from school just gets me in a way I can’t accurately describe.


11) Glen Bole, TV1 - Glen was absolutely ridiculous, and that was entirely intended from the get-go. He was a smug, cocky asshat, dickish to everybody he met, and with a hugely inflated sense of self-importance. My one goal for him was to be a player, but a complete failure of one. From attempting to kill someone by rolling a boulder down a hill on top of them, to mistaking his flashlight for the handle of his shotgun (which he had been keeping in his bag instead of, y’know, holding it), to beating up a cardboard box while shirtless and kicking it into a volcano, Glen was just one string of failures after another. His prose was basic, he had the same mechanical issues as Brennan did, but at the end of the day, Glen was a blast to write, and sometimes that’s the most important thing.


10) Lucia del Pirlo, TV2 - For how much I was invested in it, I forget how sporadic my activity was in TV2, and how few threads either of my girls ended up in. I honestly think that if I’d been more attentive to my activity levels, and if I’d written, quite frankly, more with Lucia, she’d be up there among my favourite characters I’ve written. As it stands, she has a slump towards the middle of her story, a slump of limited activity where she doesn’t do much, that prevents her from rising any further than this. I’m still happy with how I portrayed her paranoia, though; severe enough that anyone with a weapon was a threat, but not over-the-top extreme where she thought anything and everything was about to kill her. I’m also glad I got to play the foil and main enemy of Cathryn, who was probably my favourite character in TV2.



9) Joel "JB" Blackwell, Program V3 Prologue - I didn’t think that JB, a character who exists for three posts, the last one of which I physically am unable to read anymore, would end up this high, when I first started this list. But as stated previously, I feel I had some of my strongest writing in Program Prologue, and as I was putting this list together I thought, you know what? JB was a fully realised character. He had a clear, distinct voice, a personality that was fully on display, he was a dude who was so hopelessly out of his depth and doomed from the start. And I managed to pack all that into just three posts. I acknowledge he’s not a particularly deep character, but he didn’t need to be; my goal was to craft a relatable, likeable character in a very, very limited space, and I think I absolutely succeeded there.


8) Bunny Barlowe, Second Chances 2 - GOD, Bunny was fun. Bunny 2.0 was everything I wanted from her OG version and more. I pretty much ramped up everything that barely rose up above surface level in her original incarnation, and I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. She was even more bouncy, even more perky and bubbly, and even more of a self-centered terror than her first incarnation. I had thrown off the shackles of ‘I can’t just have my character do anything big and dramatic right from the off, they need time to boil and brew!!!’ by this time, and so I got to portray Bunny as scheming, and ready to play, and lie, and act, and if necessary kill, to both get off the island alive, and make everyone around her notice her, and the voice she had because of this was wonderful for me. Which is why Endgame Bunny, where she gets increasingly more and more frustrated and angry and unhinged, was a little less fun for me to write. I feel it was natural for her to reach that state, and I still adored her and Wendy’s mutual hatred, but once the mask had fully cracked off, Bunny was a very different beast to her previous state, and so I feel her endgame was proooobably the weakest part of her entire story.

stinky bnuny


7) Francis St. Ledger, V5 - If I could go back and change a single thing about Francis, it would be his godawful profile. Like, it honestly sucks, a lot; none of his hobbies and interests fit him as a character, and certainly aren’t traits that would have people in the popular circle look upon him fondly, and while I do like the ‘practices simple street dance moves that he calls parkour to sound cool’ idea, it, again, fits a very different character than the grumpy, dissatisfied, ‘popular’ dude. I think it was my attempt at telling, rather than showing, the audience that, hey, this guy isn’t your typical member of the popular crowd! Which was extra dumb, because I think I did manage to show that through his words and actions anyway! There was always a feeling of awkwardness, in a good way, whenever he interacted with the other members of the popular crowd, a feeling that he didn’t quite belong, exemplified best by the fact that his island journey is filled with misfits and oddballs and he gels a lot better with them all. I do regret swapping him out when he did, and I think he still had tons more mileage in him at the point he died, but I don’t regret the death one bit. I’m still very happy with how that turned out.


6) Glen Bole, Second Chances 1 - If Aileen was a failure at demonstrating what Second Chances should be about, Glen was a major success. Once upon a time, I actually rated him at the very top of this list, but a number of factors - looking back with more experienced eyes, his surprisingly short number of threads, me writing even more characters - have pushed him down somewhat. But I’m still incredibly proud of what I did with him, and how TV and SC Glen are both so very very different and yet undeniably both the same person. He’s still brusque. He’s still cocky. He’s still a snide little shit. But he’s got no intention of playing, in his second incarnation, he’s very loyal to those who chose to ally with him, he’s a very very very rough exterior around a diamond. I never expected that I’d write anything with Glen fuckin’ Bole that’d make me sad, but, here we are. There’s a number of ways I believe you can make a character successful in Second Chances, and giving a new lease of life, or a new spin on an old classic, is definitely one of them.


5) Astrid Tate, V6 - Astrid was a lot like Mia, in many ways. I had a lot of plans for her, before I put her on the island. I wanted her to get kills, because I wanted her to play, because it seemed like such a logical thing for her to do as a character. None of that ever ended up happening, and none of those plans ever bore fruit, and you know what? I’m glad about that, now I can look back at her, years afterwards, because her actual island story and character was so much more interesting. She still, very obviously, saw playing as the most logical thing to do. She was unpleasant to deal with, and made her intentions clear from the start. But because of my failures to get my plans in motion, she turned into someone with much more bark than bite, someone who kept telling herself she’d follow through with her plans of murder and then never did. Even with Ben right in front of her, she couldn’t force herself to kill him. She only pulled the trigger on Penelope after her friend told her to do so, something which shook Astrid pretty severely afterwards. She ended up being so much more interesting and dynamic than my original plan for her had been, and I look back on her nowadays a LOT more fondly than I did when I was actually writing her.


4) Scott Osbourne, Program V3 Prologue - When planning for the Program Prologue first started, I had a pretty solid idea for the three actual factual characters I would be running; Nanna-Fiora, Morgan, and Faye. I got a good few scenes and ideas for scenes under my belt, and when each character would be set off on their journey and when it would end. While me and Aloha were discussing the scene between Faye and Clover, I mentioned offhand the idea I had for an NPC death, of a character falling on their own weapon and not quite dying immediately. Aloha went ‘hell yeah go for it’, and that’s how Scott was born. But that scene by itself would be good for shock value and little more. Certainly not my fourth favourite character I’ve written. What propelled Scott up here is that I had a solid foundation for an actual character behind him as well, one I was able to portray in his single pregame thread and his four main-game threads, as well as some of the writing I’m most proud of on this site. None of Rhizome-9 was prewritten. Everything I posted, I had written down in the moment, when I sat down to write. I had such a clear idea of what I wanted the scene to be, such a clear idea of who Scott was, and I really think it came through in the scene. If I’d decided to promote him to a proper character, or let the scene drag on any further, I think he’d probably be good, but not great. As it stands, he’s someone I feel really accomplished for having written.


3) Morgan Jones, Program V3 Prologue - Is this controversial? Unexpected? Morgan only appeared halfway through Program Prologue, after being a reject from my v6 squad, so perhaps it is a little odd he’s my third favourite character I’ve written, but the truth is, I’ve missed writing him ever since his story finished. I think my favourite characters I’ve written are the ones where I’ve not only found their voice, but it’s also a voice that truly resonates with me, and that’s exactly what happened with Morgan. He was cowardly and nervous, and tried so desperately hard to be cool when he really really wasn’t. And I got to do stuff with him! Stuff that was weird, and strange, and served to help highlight what a weird, pathetic, hopelessly-out-of-his-depth guy he was. He found gay erotica in a church! He interrupted himself with his own talking Hulk hands! He killed someone with said talking Hulk hands, which is probably my crowning achievement on any site ever! He was a jittery jumping mess that made terrible decisions, including the one that led directly to his death, and my only concern about considering him for a future SC version is whether I’d be able to recapture that spark.


2) Roy Benson, Second Chances 2 - So fun fact about this list; I didn’t actually go back and read the majority of my characters before starting it. I’ve got a solid idea of how I feel about my cast from memories and feelings at the time and occasionally double checking individual posts just to make sure I’m not talking absolute bollocks. Second Chances Roy is the only one who I went through his entire story, start to finish, and, like, man. I dunno what came over me while I was writing him, but apparently I was actually funny? Like, I would go through parts of him, and I would smile, or laugh, and then I’d remember ‘wait hang on, I wrote that’! In much the same vein as Bunny, Roy was like his OG version but more, a bigger and hopefully better attempt at a concept I liked. This turned a dude with a short temper who played every single sport under the sun, into an ice hockey and football player who put huge stakes in gamesmanship, and had an ego inflated to the size of the sun. I learned not to second-guess myself when writing Roy, adding things to his posts off the cuff that I thought would be funny or would make sense for him to say, or think, or feel, and 9 times out of 10, it worked like a charm for Roy ‘God of sex and football’ Benson. I wasn’t super hot on his death, at the time, I didn’t think my own writing was up to the standards of the rest of his posts, but again, upon reading over it again… I actually like it a whole lot more than I first did. And that was the benefit of who Roy was as a person; he just did things, he made snap decisions and plans on the fly, because he was so damn certain he could make them all work, and because of that, he just felt so freeing to write for.


1) Garren Mortimer, V7 - Maybe it’s recency bias playing a part here. Maybe, maybe not. But Garren was an absolute joy to write for, during every step of his story, from start to finish, incel to… well, dude doing his very, very best. And he wasn’t even supposed to exist for another several years! I submitted him too late to pregame, and so I was pretty much dead set on saving him for a future version. And then final apps rolled around, and with my planned cast already up in the air and messed all about, I went ‘fuckin’ why not’, and threw him in there. And then I managed to get a couple of pregame threads under his belt, and I realised what I wanted him to be, and I realised what I wanted to do with him, and I realised I could make him more than just a stereotypical Reddit-dwelling incel bastard. I had such a good time writing him, defying every possibility for him to do something shitty and nefarious whenever the opportunity arose, and I was helped with some absolutely incredible thread partners and characters for him to bounce off of. Sometimes, you just gotta throw things at a wall and see what sticks. Sometimes you just gotta take the plunge and do stuff. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. But when it does, man, that feeling is worth every single failure a hundred times over.

Yeah I spent all day doing this instead of anything productive. Also it got late enough that fixing typos sounds like too much work. This includes every character I've written, every Pregame-only loser, adoption mistake, PV3 Prologue one-off NPC, etc., alive or dead (though of course living ones are just based on where they land right now), except for Erik Bell because oops forgot him and going back now sounds like too much work so let's call him like a plot NPC.

[+] Lots of stuff

40 - William Lohman (Virtua)

Oh boy, what makes original flavor Will the worst character I've ever written? Loads of things! We start with a pretty good premise: working with Elena, who I like writing with quite a lot, on a concept about two characters who more or less hole up and try to pretend the game away. That has legs. But if you've read Will (my condolences) you're going "That's not what happens at all. He walks around for three threads barely-active and then jumps off a bridge." Yeah. I moved out of the country right as Virtua launched, all sorts of OOC baggage killed my momentum and motivation, Will's concept had precious few "ins" for me, and he ended up doing a whole lot of nothing. He's notably shorter than my other Virtua kid, who died in the first rolls, yet he made it almost halfway through the game. Bland, uninspired, and totally failing to live up to his potential, Will didn't even have the decency to step out quickly.

39 - Nicole Husher (SC1)

Nicole was a valuable lesson but a painful one. Her original handler recruited me to do some collaborative writing in SC1, and I thought it'd be good to stretch my comfort zone some and see how things could go. Well, the answer was, badly. To write characters, I need to really craft their mindsets, get deep and personal and often a little twisted. Writing an adopted kid—even an SCified one—messes with that. Writing in close tandem with the original handler, and wanting to do their work justice, messes with that a lot. Nicole has a few good beats and let me tell you, not one of them was my idea.

38 - Shuuya Nanahara (BRAU)

The first death ever on Mini was me killing Shuuya in the prologue because I took him on a whim and wanted to set a clear message of "This BRAU thing is very AU!" And you know, that works pretty well. The invisitext songpost component has aged slightly less well. The part where I didn't know (or care) if we were manga or novel or film canon, cribbed relentlessly from all, still went off on wild tangents, etc. also wasn't so hot. Basically Shuuya's the teacher getting popped in every SOTF Prologue except we sit in his head for way too long while he thinks about Bruce Springsteen.

37 - Austin White (TV2)

In theory Austin was gonna be an experiment in doing something I don't usually do and borrowing inspiration from real life. In practice I picked some hideously gross individuals I had the misfortune of knowing, distilled their worst traits, and baked it all into a mess I saw best case as being "like Aaron, but skeevier and more willing to kill people." This then was fantastically unappealing to actually write, so I did nothing whatsoever with him in Sandbox and by the time the game hit I attempted a saving throw by doing something totally different. Well, thought I, what if I wrote a sketchy manipulative scumbag while using only literally true statements? Then I took that way way way too far and every one of Austin's posts is just this mess of declarative statements of objective fact. His voice sucks, he was hell to write, and it's a shame because the one thing he does before he's ignominiously shot is actually pretty cool—he takes his resources of jack squat and tries to bluff someone into thinking an old TV remote will blow their collar. It's a great beat and with a character I enjoyed writing behind it could've been the start of something, might've well not been the kid who got dropped ona first-rolls Hero.

36 - Claire Lambert (V4)

This one hurts because Claire's really good under other management. That is, in fact, precisely the problem—Aaron got way too busy with school and had to drop out of V4, and there was only one pitch for Claire from someone who'd had some tonal issues with several prior adoptions, so I threw my hat in the ring to try to get her a decent ending. Then it turned out that her voice was fairly anathema to my writing style, and her concept/mentality were things I struggled with. Also, she was neck-deep in a plot I wasn't briefed on, with a character who had also been adopted and then promptly died. So basically, I was too afraid to do anything unique or risky with Claire, because I didn't want to mess her up, but at the same time the scaffolding/connect-the-dots of her original plan had evaporated. Thus she walks around for a while not being very stand-out and then Ily shoot her. Also she has my sole unfilled placeholder and that merits endless personal shame.

35 - Kyoichi Motobuchi (BRAU)

This was a character I wrote. The BR cast are kinda caricatures/archetypes to begin with, and Kyoichi, the ambitious yet sycophantic class president, leans that way even among their ranks. I picked characters I didn't like in the original (and Shuuya) for the BRAU, but got rolled early and Kyoichi does his best NPC impression. He talks with someone, gets popped by an actual NPC, and that's it. I barely remember him. I dunno, I don't have an aversion or whatever, but non-original characters get marked down on that to start with, and he did nothing and had nothing particularly interesting going on.

34 - Lydia Robbins (V5)

So Lydia's failure to function is one of the things I've most extensively broken down but there's nothing like a repeat I guess. The core problem is, in V5 I decided my island cast would play against my strengths to avoid doing the dreaded character sequels with my V4 cast. Steven was a good-hearted, largely pacifistic kid with a driving motivation to stop the players. Lydia, meanwhile, was just a good-hearted, pacifistic kid. She's boring Steven, in the same version as actual Steven, and her narrative motifs and voice are all over the place. I never got a feel for her, and despite some good kids to play off of, she never really made a mark.

33 - Nichole Campbell (PV1)

The Nikki I made up! I was super proud of her back in 2010 or whatever. Her concept was that a. she was useless, lazy, and wholly unsuited for SOTF and b. she was an artist and saw the world in very visual terms. Both of these things got overplayed hard. She got rolled a six-pack of beer and spent her first thread chugging it despite not having any experience with alcohol. Then she wanders around drunk (and lemme tell you, I did not know how to write that) until she gets shot. The visual component of her voice is forced pretty hard, with these wild tangents as she imagines outrageous scenes that aren't really half as funny as I thought. At the time I liked her better than Karl but killed her first because I was Heroing Karl's plot partner. In retrospect, she was one-note while Karl had stuff to say, even though he was uncomfortable.

32 - Renée Carlson (TV1)

Renée was entirely the victim of my own success with Karen. At the start of TV1, I wanted to write two sides of the same coin to explore the TV universe and different ways of interacting with it. On one hand, there was Karen: a fearful girl with no real understanding of the game who held no malice towards anyone but was willing to do anything, no matter how heinous, to survive. On the other, Renée: a big fan of the show who justified it to herself by claiming she watched for the heroics, for those beautiful moments where humanity overcome its darker impulses, and yet when cast she was going to fail to take things seriously, then work herself up into a "heroic" crusade against the villains that was a whole lot less sincere and less pure than she wanted to believe. The problem was, Karen was very good at becoming the center of player attention and I had zero interest in writing with/about one of my characters with the other, so Renée's entire player thing was dropped. In its place was a whole lot of nothing. She has a few alright voice/character beats with better characters like Shawn and Mason, but as I may end up discussing in the thread title ranking zone I was looking for a direction with her all game and in the end her claim to fame is just Heroing Mason into Endgame (a worthy cause, granted).

31 - Everett Taylor (V4)

Everett was the third character I ever wrote and was designed to be more of a stretch than his predecessors, Aaron and Jennifer. While those two each drew a lot from what I enjoyed and how I saw myself at the time, Everett borrowed from how I saw a bunch of my classmates. This was very hard for me to relate to. It also manifests in a general lack of focus; he has some good moments here and there but I never found a real hook for him and had not a clue where to take him on the island. For a long time I considered him less disposable than Kimberly, but mostly out of habit (I've always listed my characters in order of initial application, and some of that bias seeps in from time to time). He's not abysmal but I'm not sure why anyone would want to revisit him, especially with so much better stuff from me and others. He has a lot of early writing quirks about him, and really the best thing to say for him is that Kermit did him a lot more justice than I ever did in SC2, so go read that Everett instead.

30 - Adam Morgan (V5)

Ugh, I've historically highballed Adam a lot and I have no clue why. Maybe he moves less than I'd expect if you strip out all the Mini/Pregame kids, I dunno. Anyways, Adam's entire concept was a stupid chat dare to combine infamous V4-era characters Adam Tenser and Alexia Morgan. I think I did pretty well in sneaking that stuff into a profile, making it work, making it funny if you know the joke. And I think he has legs as a concept! Just, not necessarily a concept for me to write. See, Adam's a pretty traditional rough-and-tumble, macho, wannabe-fighter boy, and I am absolutely not. I don't understand the mentality, am at best mildly put off by it, and combined with a bunch of edginess it made it hard for me to find my in with Adam. And then we hit the island, and he picked up a group, and we ran into the issue where Adam's stress response to literally everything was "Oh no. We must walk until we're too tired to think about it anymore!" and his thread partners were like, "Yeah, sounds legit." Backslash and Sansa did some good work and Adam's best stuff is playing off them and the other folks he hung with. I remember liking his death. But as a character, he's fairly one-note, albeit a different note than I usually play, and I don't think he holds up super well. Has a pretty sweet thread title in the nuclear zone, though.

29 - BB Gunnerson (V6 Pregame)

Ugh again. BB's probably the single character most likely to move whenever I finally get around to doing something with her, like finishing her V6-era Meanwhile or catching up with what she's doing circa V7. I've got a whole bunch of notes and stuff but haven't managed to find the focus for it. The big things that drag BB down are: a. she's incredibly unfinished. Her story even just in Pregame is pretty brief and minimal, I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into finding any sort of conclusion for her and Jeremy, and I was just overall pretty disengaged circa V6 (and I think it shows a lot). b. She's very safe territory. A lot of her voice, themes, narrative beats, etc. are stuff that you could slot into a bunch of my other characters and not have them feel out of place, and unlike BB, those other characters have actual stories and broader ranges. I had a lot of ideas when I worked on BB, although never enough of an island direction, which impacted my decision not to put her into V6 proper (which, despite how I'm bagging on her here, I stand by; as-is she's a meh character I can potentially make worthwhile in the future instead of a meh character who got an apathetic sendoff in the first few cycles of rolls). She's actually the longest profile I ever wrote. But for now, I look at her as potential and little more.

28 - Maribel Bay (PV3P)

Maribel is an NPC created to be kicked into a basement. She performs this role admirably. She's a one-scene wonder and does little besides perform her narrative role, which is to get absolutely clowned on by Grant, but it's a worthy end and helps set up a nice reveal on his part. She doesn't have a deep mentality or a lot of stuff under the surface or any real special things to her, which keeps her down here, but as a support character—which was explicitly her reason for existing—she's solid. Would I revisit her if I had the chance? Nah. There just wasn't a ton there beyond the scene she was a vehicle to execute.

27 - Richard Ormsby (Virtua)

Richard is basically the exact same case as Maribel but edges her because nobody knew it was coming. Back when Virtua was getting rolling, I decided to try my own spin on an element of SOTF history: Josh Goodman. I was intrigued by the idea of this obvious villain who goes down at the starting gun to push a less-obvious contender, found it actually quite clever, and I thought I'd modernize the concept a bit. Thus, Richard was the big bad bully who gets wrecked by Delilah, who ends up actually becoming a notable figure. What made Richard a bit less successful was that Virtua had no Pregame, so there was not actually any opportunity to make waves/build him up beyond his profile and a brief one-shot. He's a plot device, but I think he does a nice job pushing other, better characters and kicking off some good arcs.

26 - Morton Bishop (PV3)

Morton is maybe a bit like an Austin who doesn't suck and isn't quite so to-the-core despicable? He's an experiment with voice to a degree, but more playing kind of fast and loose, and he's just such a jerk. It was lovely, but when someone I was into got rolled he was the less obvious kid in terms of future path/plans so it was he who had to go. Basically, what holds him down, then, is that he doesn't have much of an arc or story to speak of, not by design but as side effect of chance. Well, so it goes. As far as kids I might myself recycle for SC someday, he's in the pool.

25 - Mizuho Inada (BRAU)

It's weird to think about, but there was a time, writing Mizuho, when I legitimately thought she was the end-all-be-all peak of anything I'd ever accomplish in SOTF. The BRAU was my first real version, Mizuho was the first character of mine who ever got much notice or felt successful, and I just had this idea that she was the special one. Thankfully that was incredibly off the mark, as demonstrated by her relative placement. Mizuho does a good job of taking a flat throwaway character from BR and doing something semi-faithful to that core (down to the absurd space warrior delusion) while also having some more nuance and emotional weight. That said, she's very baby's-first-flagship, has a lot of clunky bits, some weird standoffs where no narrative ground whatsoever is given, and a narrative arc that is actually quite short and mostly made satisfying by book-ending courtesy of Brackie and Yoshio. And thank goodness for that—she got rolled so close to the cutoff where the BRAU died of inactivity, and I would be an eternal mountain of salt if her story was hanging unfinished.

24 - Karl Chalmers (PV1)

Karl is probably a lot more relevant today than he was when I wrote him, unfortunately. That said, I probably wouldn't write him today. The cowardly, scummy, fascism apologist in a world that routine kills its citizens for loyalty, Karl spends a lot of his time debating the ideological correctness and moral acceptability of the very death game he is being subjected to, proving that he is at least not a hypocrite. He spends the entire game as the hostage/partner of storyspoiler's Juliet Watanabe, and if we were doing the political compass thing it's be the legendary auth-right/lib-left team up. Much of the core of their story is these winding ideological debates about whose way is better, and while Karl gives ground here and there he ultimately dies still a fascist jerk. Spending significant amounts of time arguing his awful points as well as I could was draining and not overly happy, and while I think he does his thing pretty successfully the real stars are the other kids he meets, chief among them Juliet, Cake's Luke Mendoza, and 'foxd's Bryant Carver. Karl gets a somewhat uncomfortable flattering edit, but in certain ways that's sort of the point; he's not an idiot and presents himself well as he shares musings like "Racism is made up hogwash but it's to keep the impressionable masses in line so can you really say it's all bad?" The reprehensibility is in the message itself. Condor did a really good, scummy-in-a-whole-other-way, non-fascist take on Karl in SC1 that's probably a whole lot more fun to read, particularly now; I had a much better time reading his Karl than writing mine.

23 - Lavender Ripley (V7 Pregame)

That the first encounter with V7 comes so far up the list is a pretty darn good sign, I have to say. This is especially true because what's wrong with Lavender (insofar as anything's wrong with her) is mostly that she's woefully neglected. Well, that's maybe half true; the other half is that I had a really tough time dealing with her voice/style and meshing it to her concept. As I imagined her, Lavender had the same sorts of concerns and focuses that ended up in her narrative, but expressed them in a much quieter, more understated way. She was conceived of as a sort of counterpoint to a lot of the right-wing V7 kids, one who had a few points in common with them (guns) but found them anathema in far more ways. I never quite found that sweet spot, though, so she became a lot more out-there, prone to playing the martyr, and prone to getting into it with people directly. I don't think she's bad as-is, but this all kept me from feeling her as an island character, where she'd've ended up just a b-lister to get dumped for one of the others, and I think she'll definitely need some TLC to get to a stage where I think she's living up to what she can be. That said, what there is of her Pregame is pretty decent, does give her a unique feel among my cast to some extent, and was fun to write, thus she leaves the similarly-incomplete BB in the dust.

22 - Sofia Chiles (PV3)

Sofia was largely a vehicle for me to make impenetrable jokes about pre-1900s English folk ballads, so that's a bit of a barrier of entry right off the bat. That said, as one of the quirkier concepts I've played with—a girl who idealizes the fictional ancestor her widowed mother told her stories about as a kid, who just so happened to be an infamous criminal—I think she did a pretty good job of being decently human. She's much scrappier and more physical than my norm, but cut with some of the classic overconfidence paired incompetence that I love so. She got to play off some great characters, punching Galahad at the start of the game (he asked for it!) and teaming up with wannabe-spy Sebbo later on. What keeps her down so low is that at a lot of times I just hit a wall or was at a loss. I feel like she could've, and should've done more with her time, gotten another two or three scenes in. She's the character I'm most firm about bringing back for some future SC, though not due to any perceived deficiencies with her first run; she was in part built to have options as a returnee.

21 - Isaiah Garvey (V4)

Wait, I can hear some of the readers saying, what's Isaiah doing all the way up here? Don't you hate adoptions, to the point of swearing off them forevermore? And yeah, yeah I do. And I'll certainly get into why here, but take that out of the picture and my time with Isaiah I look back on fondly. He's the sort of character I'd never ever come up with on my own, and he deals in topics largely alien to me, spitting bible verses left and right, but that's part of what made him a bunch of fun to play with as a voice. I think a bunch of his posts hold up, in many cases better than my more well-known V4 kids. If only he'd had some sort of more coherent arc to go with that. Oh, and the adoption thing, that too. See, the thing is, pre-adoption, Isaiah was rough in some ways. And taking a kid who has issues and then "fixing" them, that just screams arrogance to me. It's a mentality I don't like, I don't think it's a healthy spot to be in, and if I'm gonna tilt at somebody else's windmills I'm at least going to be riding my own horse in the future.

20 - Richard Ormsby (SC2)

In SC2, Richard, a character created to die in his first thread, returned to once again die in his first thread. This time, though, he had a little Pregame under his belt and a whole lot more writing experience and motivation backing him up. His stuff outside the game is okay; he's not as deep or nuanced as he could be, but he has moments, and gets to interact with a couple other cool characters (and become the nexus of a particularly wacky strings-on-corkboard bit of interdimensional shenanigans I will one day get busted for). In-game, he is not a PoV character. I'm pretty proud of his voice, but he's (intentionally) relegated to a support role and killed off halfway through the scene. If this was the rate-your-scenes thread, the whole thing would be much higher, but as a character Richard is another role-filler. He fills his role particularly well, but that doesn't really compare to the higher level character work I've done elsewhere.

19 - Phillip Olivares (V7)

Speaking of, Phillip is also a character built for a role which involves going out early, but he's one with a whole lot more stuff backing him up. His first Pregame thread—initially intended to be his only Pregame thread—is one of the purest, most manic fever-dream writing experiences I've ever had on the site, as I forced myself to listen to "Miracles" by ICP on loop for the entire first half of the thread. Phillip has some real concerns and actual emotional heft, though I sometimes struggled to balance that with his more comedic side. I may be underrating him some because he was frequently difficult for me to write, due largely to how his mentality and mannerisms differed so heavily from mine; the one thing I can speak vaguely coherently to that was in his makeup (magic tricks) basically never came up. I mean, obnoxiously long jokes, I guess I have that too. Phillip's in-game stuff I stand behind, but all of it's made possible by those around him, and his bailing on the menagerie thread is frankly kinda awkwardly handled in retrospect.

18 - Emily Nakoa (V5 Pregame)

Of my V5 Pregame kids, Emily absolutely got the short end of the stick at the time. She was a lot of fun for me to work with in Pregame—probably more so than my actual V5 characters—but also a lot of the little pieces of her plot stalled out or didn't properly start to begin with. For one, in her very original draft, she was conceived of as a partner-in-crime for another kid who came from a worse off background, as each envied aspects of the other's life. This was solidly dropped by the time her profile was submitted, but other plotlines that did start up followed suit. Her Prom date with Miles, everything past the opening stages of her cousin moving into her house, and the ill-fated senior prank were all storylines that got going and then sputtered out. A lot of it was, I just hadn't figured out how to make Pregame count while keeping it fun. And of course, if stuff just ended there, she'd be down somewhere with BB. But I'd been kicking around bringing Emily back for something since V5 was actually ongoing, and as I was laying my V7 plans I found what felt like the perfect opportunity. She's still super WIP, and thus prone to swings, but I'm glad I pulled her out of the abandoned Pregame character pile.

17 - Alexander Bonham (PV2)

My plan at the start of PV2 was to write a pair of throwback characters, evoking aspects of V1 with a more modern sensibility. Alexander was the hero, and Robin was the villain, and while she strayed pretty far from the initial plan, he stayed fairly on-target. The thing about Alexander as hero was, he wasn't nice, or pleasant. He was a smug, self-important jerk who gave monologues that'd make V1 Dodd blush, but at the end of the day he was trying to help people, by keeping them safe or browbeating them back onto the side of righteousness. As with a bunch of kids in the earlier Minis, he has some pacing quirks and doesn't get to do as much as I would've liked. I used to forget he existed. But looking back at him, I'm pretty happy with a lot of his beats and how he manages to gel with the universe/version despite his crazy concept.

16 - Aaron Hughes (V4)

Probably some folks are surprised I'm ranking Aaron this high, given my well-vocalized gripes about him. Last time I did this, I ranked him below Adam Morgan, because I was being a contrary self-flagellating whiner. The truth is, Aaron does a bunch of stuff very well. It's just not the stuff I personally value the most, and he's tangled up in a bunch of things that are difficult for me to look back on objectively. Aaron was my first SOTF character, and the first draft of his profile included charming stuff like having trouble understanding the real world isn't D&D. His Pregame has some absolute clunkers of threads as I bumbled through establishing voice and character and (especially) subtlety. But in-game, he sinks his claws into a group and rolls through maybe 80% of the story off that momentum, and on a plot level it's solid stuff. I wanted to toy with the idea that you could be a villain without being a killer or a player, and Aaron will probably never be unseated as the character in my roster responsible for the most egregiously awful, dastardly nonsense. Where some characters just painfully murder their foes, Aaron uses proxies, throws allies under the bus, and at his worst seals his entire group's fate knowingly by convincing them that the rescue is a trap being laid by players. When he does start killing, his victims include his final remaining ally, who's loyally followed him since the first day. But... with all these fun beats, the obvious thing that's missing is the why, the character nuance and emotional core. Basically, Aaron's thing was he at first took a utilitarian stance that anything was permissible in the name of escape and since he was so much better suited to manage that anything could be sacrificed to keep himself safe, for the greater good obviously. Somewhere in the mid-game he realized he was clueless, shrugged, and kept on faking like everything was dandy to keep his meat shields between him and the bullets. He passed on the rescue because he knew he'd be caught out for the awful heinous stuff he'd done and figured he'd roll the dice on winning and coaxing the terrorists to help him vanish instead. It's... pretty basic. I dunno, I want from a character an in, some elements I can connect to (even if a character is on the whole an irredeemable person). Aaron's a character I created when I was 18, and he's got all the things I thought were super cool about sneaky evil villains back then. And my tastes have changed, but he hasn't. I'm far enough away to say, yeah, he's not bad. He does the job. But the real magic of his story belongs to his group, and always has.

15 - William Lohman (SC2)

SC2 Will is much like Richard: a functional vessel to make a scene come together. Unlike Richard, who has some okay-but-not-amazing Pregame bits, Will is the scene. He's there the whole time, the lens for one of the weirder experiments I've embarked upon, as both my characters die in the very first thread of the game. Will specifically gets it bad, as he is largely paralyzed by his fall, eaten alive just a little bit by seagulls, and then left to drown as the tide comes in, all the while trying to come to terms with the inevitability of his death. It's pretty grim stuff! He's perfectly focused, for good and ill. Just, that laser-focus doesn't quite get at the core of what makes characters great to me, doesn't hit the same complexity and meaning it could. Don't get me wrong, if I had to show someone what my SOTF stuff was about in a single thread, it'd probably be his. But other kids with more room have, well, more space to grow.

14 - Samantha Reynolds (Evo)

I have a lot of lingering affection for Samantha despite the absolute circus that was the OOC situation at the end of Evo. That said, it absolutely messes with her arc, and she has some other issues too. She was the heir apparent to Mizuho back when I thought that I would never produce better SOTF work than I was in 2010, and she is legitimately better than Mizuho by a lot. Samantha is a neurotic ball of stress who pairs a heavy academic focus with an inexplicable love of gangster rap, sold terribly because I'd heard almost none of it. Her story rolls along at super-speed, as she becomes bestest friends with a guy she's known for a single thread. It also digs into some pretty uncomfortable places relating to mental health and self-harm, with a splash of body horror, which I've never really felt the need to poke at with anybody else. She has this burning fear of death and desire to live that would be captured much more successfully with a later character on this list, and paired this with a wishy-washy desire to be the villain that I've come back to again and again. But Samantha was the first. She also had a few other good beats, like poaching gear to deny resources to her opponents and such. A shame that her conclusion is completely out of character as written, because it was wrapped up in a truly wacky escape plot that never got properly resolved.

13 - Sven Vee (V7)

Sven was (way too) much fun to write, especially in the moments where I'd post something especially funky (say, his revolving one-shot, or really any of the hidden interludes) and then just sit silently waiting to see if somebody noticed. I sat on the random text for I think nine months, which is the third longest that I can recall keeping a specific punchline secret (behind Adam's concept origin, which was like a year and a half, and ??? patience young padawan ). Sven was built to function read either with or without all the wild wacky stuff, and I think he does this well. Unfortunately, he was also built to have a little more direction than he ultimately manifested, and while I'm very pleased with his vibe, character, and the jokes/references/meta shenanigans I got up to with him, I think he's got an inverse-Aaron going on where he doesn't have much of a plot, especially if you're not onboard for the cosmic metaphysical time loop deal. Fortunately, I care less about that, but a lot of my other kids have stuff going on that edges him some.

12 - Misty Browder (V7 Pregame)

Misty's probably the most sincere attempt I've made at a Pregame antagonist, and while she didn't get to inflict her specific brand of misery on all that many threads, I enjoyed what she did do and also the opportunity to toy with what made her tick through her interactions with Max. She's probably getting a charitable placement here, in all honesty, because while much like Lavender and BB she still has hanging loose ends that would love wrapping up, the one Meanwhile she does have is a whole lot better and more interesting, plus I know precisely where she's going, plus her trajectory has always been pointed straight to stuff outside the V7 timeline. If it all works out, maybe she goes up a bit. If it doesn't, she stands to lose more ground than most.

11 - Steven Salazar (V5)

Steven was a weird meta love letter/one-sided argument that I'm pretty sure I've never entirely explained. He came from a discussion way back in V4 with the handler of the legendary and inimitable Julian Avery, who should be required reading for anyone who wants to try their hand at a player hunter. Anyways, it was posited that such a stance was by necessity often fairly hypocritical and immoral, and Steven was my rebuttal. He's clever, driven, and a natural improviser, and this gives him a whole lot of tools to use in the pursuit of his ends. He did a bunch of stuff using the arena that I still stand by as innovative and interesting, from using the coin-operated tourist binoculars to spy on far-off players to siphoning gas from broken-down cars to make (possibly non-functional, granted) Molotov cocktails, to getting a bike back in working order. He also got precisely the end that was inevitable, cut down by one of the players he was trying to stop. It was earlier than I was hoping, and I had quite a few other tricks in my pocket, but he's the only one of my V5 cast I'm legitimately satisfied with and I think that, while he's a short ride, there's a lot there that's good.

10 - Robin Pounds (PV2)

So like I said, Robin was meant to be a V1 villain to Alexander's V1 hero. I laid the framework for this is a really lengthy opening post, and my initial goal was to have her burn someone alive. What she turned into, however, was a lot better. I'd never heard the term "yandere" at the time, and it was definitely not in Robin's initial concept, but when she got hold of Condor's Shawn and realized that he just might keep forgiving her for the bad stuff she did as long as everyone else they met died so there was nobody for him to abandon her in favor of, things really kicked into gear. I think what I appreciate about Robin most is that she's very different from my normal villains. I tend towards smooth collected intellectual baddies. Robin is not that. She brains someone with a brick, swears up and down nothing happened when Shawn asks what all the noise was, and is then positively shocked when the announcements rat her out, even though it's the second time hearing them. She's petty, mean, spiteful, impulsive, and a total mess, and probably gets the best karmic villain takedown I've ever written. I'm also pretty proud of her thread title scheme and the basic concept of someone dropping into the game with a raging fever as a disadvantage. Stuff that could've been better, well, more writing for one (spoilers: this is my gripe for almost every character I've ever written). I should've asked for the temperature tracker in subtitles of the threads I wasn't naming. And I think there was probably room to vary it up a bit. Oh, right, and she got rolled before I could Hero any of my favs with her, that sucked.

9 - Susan Clarke (V5 Pregame)

Susan is the queen of the Pregame to Meanwhile jump for me. She was my favorite V5 Pregame character, the one whose voice I actually felt like I got, and while at the time I was worried she was too much like my V4 cast, in hindsight I think she has a lot setting her apart. Susan's a bit of a chaotic troublemaker, in a relatively-benign sort of way. I was tickled in hindsight with myself when I read the big party thread and she spends half of it slamming the (non-alcoholic because her parents were worried after that time she fell off the table) beers she brought while everyone around her tried to keep up and got more and more drunk. I liked the actual team vibe/camaraderie with the softball girls. I liked getting to interact with Andi in a quieter context. And I'm pretty proud of myself for finally finishing her big existence-justifying thread years after the fact. I hope getting a quiet little tribute to each of the other softball girls maybe in some way makes up for her absence. I'm not saying she'll never show up again in any capacity, but of my Pregame-only kids, Susan is the only one who I could at all comfortably refer to as complete.

8 - Darlene Silva (V7)

Darlene's still alive right now so this'll be brief! She's a lot of fun to write, broke me out of a rut by showing that rules are made to be broken, and probably makes me laugh in like a non-evil fashion more than any other kid I've written. Sometimes an evil one too. Her introductory one-shot was a blast to write and plan, and I'm really pleased with how her island journey has turned out thus far, especially considering I had no real plans for her, a concept that was like "riffing on sweater girls some???" and picked a thread to crash by throwing darts.

7 - Mina Mashall (PV3P)

Mina's another of the needs-more-writing club, but hides it well enough you don't even realize she had two separate hefty subplots excised. Prologue was a fascinating experiment and it was a fun challenge to write a character knowing all the while that rolls wouldn't mess me up. Mina's something between a celebration and an exorcism of the themes, motifs, and characters traits I come back to so frequently. She takes a lot of my preoccupations and cranks them up to eleven, while turning others on their head. I think one of my favorite parts of her is that I was able to work a recurring structural subversion into her narrative, wherein she thinks about doing something noble, enumerates all the reasons it's better to be craven and cowardly, then goes, "Yep, the coward's life for me!" and abandons her allies in the dirt. I also was super pleased by the chemistry she found with handlers old and new, but especially with Elena's Charlie, who initially I figured would just be the source of a little character-establishing scrap in Sandbox. Mina's unfinished and stuff in that I-should-post-more-in-After way, but I think she came out quite nicely on the whole.

6 - Jennifer Perez (V4)

Jennifer is forever and always my secret favorite. She was my second character, and was imbued with a whole lot of stuff that was important to me at 18, but unlike how I look back and wince at Aaron, with Jennifer I mostly am a little sad and a good bit impressed. Her story is almost entirely built around her psychology and mental state, which is never quite as fragile as she fears. She's got a great cast of characters to play off of, and engages in the sort of plotlines and moments I'm not sure I'd think of now—and in this really open way, where sometimes she works herself up into this towering fury and comes in like she can shake the world and then gets no-sold and just immediately deflates. She does have some issues, mostly notably this technical trick with sentence length and spacing that I thought was super creative and clever but actually sucks. She also has one thread in specific that's a dud, and it's her last one before she gets whisked away in the rescue—a thread to roll the activity clock over paired with bad chemistry to create a just kinda unfortunate beat. But I think some of her post-game work is some of the better stuff I've done in this weird, painfully prescient way, and gets at things it would take me years more to learn in real life.

5 - Juliette Sargent (V7)

And not just because she just died! Juliette was an anomaly for me in a few ways. I am normally not a planner, but pieces of her story were constructed in theory before her profile was even written—a trait she has in common with half the characters above her. Juliette's story was a crazy trip of sneakiness, double-meanings, and an emotional arc designed to read differently in the moment and in retrospect. She saw me playing with foreshadowing and symbolism to a much stepper degree than is my norm, and I think it paid off pretty well. That people connected with her, and that her swerve was well enough set up that I didn't catch hate mail for it, mean a lot to me. There are of course some little things I'd tweak or change with the benefit of hindsight, but for the most part everything is in it's proper place, as Juliette would want it.

4 - Alton Gerow (V7 Pregame)

Somewhere during V7 applications, someone joked that Alton was secretly my flagship and would have a massive Meanwhile. That was, of course, right on the mark; the Roster alone is longer at present than any of my V7 characters. Having a lot of writing doesn't make a character good by default, certainly, but Alton was, like Juliette, planned for a specific end, and has all sorts of quiet little jokes and wrinkles and character beats hidden in his threads, in Pregame and Meanwhile both. He's a new take that deals with some old favorite themes, traits, and ideas, and I feel like I have his voice, mentality, and style down in the way that only comes from sitting in his head passing judgment on his peers for almost a year now. In a lot of ways, the Roster is a project of the moment, a piece of the zeitgeist that will probably not be as approachable in retrospect (I certainly can't imagine anyone reading it top to bottom and finding that an enjoyable experience), but I've been very pleased with his (soon to be expanded) narrative outside of it, too. And of course, he's full of the typical little secrets it amuses me to keep.

3 - Jewel Evans (TV2)

I don't talk about Jewel that much for pretentious artiste reasons but aside from not dying she did exactly what I wanted her to. She's the weirdest and most ambitious thing I've ever done on SOTF by a margin of not-even-close. Some people don't like her and will be scandalized I put her this high. One or two probably think she should have the top spot. I'm working on figuring out how to get her to crawl out of your computer screen, and if that goes well maybe she moves up, but until then I guess the best I can do is suggest you follow her on Twitter.

2 - Karen Ruiz (TV1)

Karen is the other heavily planned character. Every thread is building towards something, from Pregame on, and that something is her being a somewhat improbable but totally inevitable villain. She came about because, way back in V4, I got in a debate with someone and was basically given the ol' "If it's so easy to write a big killer, I'd like to see you try!" Karen pulls together a bunch of the most common villain traits of the era, justifies them, and then goes hard on them all version long. For her first ten threads in-game, she doesn't say a single word. She mostly shoots people abruptly, often in the back. And yet, for all that, people connected with her enough on an emotional level that I have a document of testimonials that she's actually sympathetic. Karen fulfills the promise of Samantha's themes by playing them with much greater focus and intent, and in many ways she anticipates the trajectory of villains in SOTF. She's not someone who wants to kill, or who enjoys violence. She's scared and appalled and horrified, but murdering is the way to live, and she wants to live, so she goes and kills a whole bunch of people. And she gets away with it. The end.

1 - Kimberly Nguyen (V4)

What a huge surprise, right? Well, depending on what you've read of Kimberly, maybe actually yes. I'll be the first to admit that pieces of her story have flaws. In chunks of Pregame, I wasn't sure if she was comic relief or not. At places during the game, I didn't know where she was going or what she should be doing. There are spots where her story is opaque, and spots where it holds the reader's hand way more than it has to. The Epilogue has some of the best scenes I've ever written and a whole bunch of stuff probably nobody cared about even at the time. But the thing that puts Kimberly at the top, the thing that sets her apart and makes her successful, is what she ultimately does with surviving. She's almost exactly the same age I am. Her story in V4 started the week I had undergrad orientation, and Endgame wrapped up a few weeks after I graduated. Since V4 concluded, she's popped up in other stuff—often from a distance, sometimes much more closely. Her story is of course largely about SOTF, but by now it's also about everything after, how time interacts with tragedy, how someone can choose to change and grow or not. I've had other characters who have lived, of course, through rescue or skipping the game or shooting loads of people on TV or whatever, but none of them have quite the same slightly askew perspective on the world or quite the same drive or quite the same voice that's so easy to reach for. So Kimberly stands out not because she has objectively the best story or anything (though I stand by it) but because nobody else I've written has ever been quite like her and nobody else ever really will be.

3) Yuki Hayashibara- Looking back on how I wrote Yuki, I feel like she was a supporting character. Most of her motivation and characterization stems from how close she is to her sisters. I found that Yuki was at her best when she was in a group and bouncing off other characters. Perhaps I should have had her stay with the initial group she was with at the start of her tenure. For what it’s worth, I did like her time with Yuka, despite how short it was, and how her sacrifice affected Yuka in the long run. I only wish I could have done a little more with her, but thems the breaks.

2) Ned Jackson- Ned was the character I used to ease my way into role playing. He was a manifestation of my interests and a sort of pseudo self insert. I liked how Ned started out on the island. He managed to gel well with others and found motivation to endure his current situation. My biggest regret with Ned is that, despite the potential I saw for him, I ultimately gave him up to save Yuki. I could see him trying to rally other characters to try and stop fighting. Granted, as he was a pacifist character up against paranoia and violence, things would not go his way. His stay on the island may have been cut short, but I think I learned a lot through this experience.

1) Zachary Beck- I know it’s kind of predictable to put my longest standing character in the top spot, but Zach is easily my best work. I didn’t get to do a lot with Zach in pregame, but I managed to do a lot with him during the main game. At his core, Zach is a scared, insecure kid, and I wrote him with that in mind. He tries to go about the game keeping a low profile, but he can’t help but find himself coming across trouble, whether or not he’s the perpetrator. He doesn’t enjoy being alone, or being a murderer, and is plagued by guilt. Zach does what he can to get ahead, but he worries about how his reputation back home will be affected. Overall, Zach was a treat to write and I’m proud of how far I got with him.

Derrick not on this list as he's still alive. If he were, he'd likely be around 4 or 5 out of 9.

8- Jason Rosser (Program 3 Prologue)

Holy shit! This character! I had no idea what I was doing for the most part with him. He was very much a victim of circumstance. Y'see, he was created with a group in mind, one me and Toxie spitballed over in Mini chat that was based on the best segment from one of the VHS movies. It was one we were both pretty hyped over and we got two others onboard with it.

And that's where the problems started, the group wasn't fully finished and went into prologue missing a member. The result of that was Jason spinning his wheels the entire time, just randomly fighting people left and right with little care. Whilst Mick and Zeke, the other two members of this group, had actual threads with character development and a sad ending to their story. It's fully my fault that Jason ended up the way he did and it taught me a lot about creating characters with ideas in mind.

7- Sal Bonaventura (V7)

It makes me very sad to put him here, but I couldn't in good conscience put him ahead of my other characters when I look back at what I was doing with him. I had a lot of plans and ideas for Sal that never got going, some of them the pitch I had given Skraal to get him in the first place. He feels like a broken promise that I had made and that's what stings the most about him.

It doesn't help that in retrospect I sped through a lot of his later insomnia induced hallucinations to get to his death thread, which was already pretty crowded as is. And as a consequence didn't get into his mindset properly. At the time I thought as a person who deals with insomnia that a character with it would be easy, boy did this show me.

6- James Mulzet (SCDos)

James had been a character years in the making, his schrodingers death way back in V4 made me jokinlgy vow in chat that I was going to rectify that.

I didn't. I forced humor into his posts that didn't gel with what I was writing for him. I didn't pregame with him resulting in me having to write extensive flashbacks in his posts to inform people on his relationships rather than let it play out naturally between handlers. I was both extremely lazy with this character and rather haphazard with him at the same time.

But! It would be a lie to say I didn't like some of what I wrote with him, in particular my work with Laurels and his character Sophie. Probably the highlight of SCDos for me along with the thread dealing with Damion's injury and the rivalry of sorts with Theo. Out of just my own writing with him, however, is his dealing with Clio's death.

5- Zoe Walker (TV2)

My first ever character and the start of a trend of me adopting characters rather than creating my own that took until V7 for me to grow out of. At the time I had not done any real creative writing on my own when I wasn't forced to at school, so Zoe is full of growing pains that I had to edit out afterwards. A lot of spelling mistakes, messing up characters names, the works.

In terms of what's being written, I do have fondness for the meat of the posts. Her partnership with Michael, either with Polybius or Yugikun, her hostile relationship with Cathryn that blows out dramatically or the Ice Palace massacre. But I did mess up notably towards the end, her kill with Norma. My very first. A lack of communication and clarification on my part ended with a death that could have been way better. Luckily, her last thread right after redeems it somewhat.

4- William "Will" McKinley (V6)

Ah, Will. I adopted Will off of Dannyrulx who's version of the character was a lot more larger than life than me. At the time the plan was to ground him somewhat and set off an arc of Will trying to be more a clear-cut hero after Rea's death, but messing up at most turns because of his hang-ups. Unfortunatly it got mired a bit in some meaness with the character that I have since edited out and regret deeply. Ideas that seemed funny at the time, but instead hurt the narrative.

Other than that, I had fun with Will. He was my blow-off steam character, especially towards the end with his fights with Alex Tarquin and Michael Crowe. The transition thread with Nadia was a good point to set my own mark on the character and carry on with the idea I had for him, punctuated with haunted reality where he sort of gets on the idea of preaching pacifism to people. Of course, then Darius gets killed in an idea carried over from Danny that I was game for followed by two threads that were some of the most fun I had that version. A lot of that goes to Grim_Wolf and Toxie who were excellent fight partners and Randomness for allowing to crash their Amanda thread for some final madness before the curtain call.

Writing Will taught me a lot, of how to use physicallity in scenes, changing to fit the scenes/threads around the character and, in general, to have fun with what you're writing. Will was what I needed at the time as I wasn't doing so hot at school and questioning things I was doing in general. So, thanks for that you scottish bastard.

3- Brandon Murphy (V7)

I had Brandon for a hot minute in this version. About three threads, one of them a oneshot and the third a death thread. And yet, I feel satisfied with Brandon. Do I feel I could have done a lot more with him? Of course I do, but I'm not angry with what I got do with him. His second thread watching the proceedings in front of him was the first time I got to write with certain handlers that I always had intention to, but never had the chance and planning the third with them was a lot of fun .

To be entirely honest however, he was a really tricky character for me to inhabit, even if just briefly. His mindset is one I can't stand irl and so I didn't try to dwell too deeply on it, which I do regret a bit. add in the fact he has no pregame of any sorts and I basically had to conjure up a character based on just a profile. Now I've done that with characters before, see above, but not to the best effect and that was on my mind writing him. In the end though, I do miss this toxic prick and he was fun to write for the brief spell he was here.

2- Serena Waters (V6)

Vroom Vroom. There's my reason.

Ok, jokes aside. Serena is where my writing really solidifed itself. With a few caveats of course, I was really focused on writing long because of how embarrased I was over my TV2 performance and really wanted to get better at writing something remotely evocative to people. With that I lost sights of certain things such as activity and being the pseudo leader of the group she was in. It didn't help that at the time I was struggling with my math classes that were holding me back from finishing school and so, SOTF was on the lower end of priorities.

And while I didn't write the profile (that was left to Yugikun which I'm forever thankful for), I found Serena easier to inhabit than Brandon. She had interests and a personality similar enough to mine that her posts came easy enough in my mind. It takes her a bit, her first two threads are rather floundering, but she really finds her groove in her third thread when she meets Aidan and Mel. I'm forever thankful for Rorick and Ice for writing with me at the time, D/N when he took over Aidan and sticking with me and Ice throughout V6. I really felt like improving to match with them and I hope that showed through the writing.

Anyways, let's get it out of the way. The Jeep death. Probably the single most memorable thing I'll bring to this site and one I'm a bit mixed on personally. While I love Jerry's end of things, I'm not too fond of how I handled it myself. So many ideas were thrown around at the time that I feel would have improved on aspects of it. So when I look back on it, I start thinking what if's and it bums me out, because it did something else than just be really dark comedy. Something that had to be pointed out to me in retrospect, Serena unleashing a greater evil hiding behind the more larger than life one in her sights. One that eventually comes back to haunt her.

Even with all the difficulties I faced irl or ingame with Serena, she was always a treat to write for and I felt nothing, but pride when certain members of this community I respect very much stepped up to me and told me they enjoyed her journey.

1- Sean Leibowitz (V7)

Sean was a long time coming. He came from challenges Naft made years ago, back when this decade didn't look like it was perpetually on fire and smelled of sulfur. An grafitti artist with a fear of the dark. An aspect of him I wished I played more into, but at the same time. I'm really satisifed with what I got to do with Sean.

I had no ideas for Sean when V7 started. He was my throw into threads and see what happens character, and so the entire journey he had with the group he ended up with. The friendships and crushes came from moment to moment writing. From his pregame threads to his second to last thread were almost all that. Things happening almost on a whim.

The only fully planned was his last thread with Justin where MK Kilmarnock showed me how good he was at setting a scene up and helping me throughout with the action and Catche, Sunny and Ryuki for setting up the start of it which felt like the most emotional I had ever gotten writing on SOTF, the slow breakdown of Sean as Thomas and Zach start getting ready to throwdown is some of my best writing and they helped elevate it.

If there some stuff with him that I wasn't satisfied fully with, it would be some lulls in certain threads that ran very long. I found as a writer I tend to best in action or reacting to something. Keeping that voice going whilst nothing major happening is difficult for me and one could see that with Sean. Other than that, I'm very satisfied.

All I wanna say now is this. Writing with the gang over V7 has been such a blast and it's one of the things I'll treasure most on this site.

Clout Gang forever!

There aren’t really any juicy tidbits here, folks. List is kinda how you’d expect it.

7. Asher Glas (V6)
My writing style in V5 required a certain amount of buy-in, coupled with what I was trying to do with the character I’m most known for. In V6, I had this idea to sell other people as much as possible and stick to the supporter’s role for most of the game. Asher was going to be my send-up of hero types, but with a twist; my objective was to lose every single fight Asher was involved in. He was my jobber hero character who was athletic and dangerous enough to be a credible thread but absolute trash whenever he got into a fight scene. V5 burnout is insidious and lingering, though, and I app’d him in between long hiatuses and never got him on the island.

6. Oskar Pearce (V6)
Oskar I’m proud of for some reasons, and it’s such a shame what happened to him. Oskar I auditioned Sansa for after reading his pregame and falling in love with the smile/shield thing and his relationship to his mother. It genuinely struck me as a very meaty bone to sink my teeth into. I liked what I did with him, and adopted my ‘seller values’ with him, too - his primary role in our brief time together was to sell Caedyn’s manipulation while not revealing much about his own thoughts on the matter. Unfortunately, I hit a stressful period and needed to hero him off (which I did illegally) and wound up handing him to staff to kill while I dealt with a super emotionally bleak area in my life. I feel very, very bad for how I handled Oskar, but the writing’s solid, as is the core concept.

5. Kasumi White (SC2)
My second adoption that was much less adeptly handled but one handled with very little attempt to ape the original style. Whereas with Oskar I was respectful completely of Sansa’s direction, Kasumi I decided to take a direction all on my own. Kasumi was mostly me kicking the rust off of the tires and messing about with pictures as narrative, as well as a very brief attempt at doing a plotline that I really wanted to do for a while - kid who’s crippled trying to have a happy time when they’re unable to move and will definitely get DZ’d. Her three-part death post has a lot of intent behind it, and not all of it lands. I really want to shout out to backslash, MS, and Kami for sticking with the punches on the death scene as I explained to them in chat what they were actually seeing while I wrote like, raps or whatever.

4. Matthew Weiss (TV2)
Weiss was fun because he was an outlet. I saw a lot of funny behaviors in SOTF that I really wanted to ape, and I thought it’d be neat to have a character that existed to poke fun at those behaviors. These included placeholder posts, OOC commentary, songposts, and format fuckery. I can’t say his story is nuanced or deep because it contains a lot of jabs at everything, and he has some more subtler condemnations that never really landed. Mostly it’s a shame that he had his entire TV team all in one area to make a plan and I wasted it on my mockery character. Ah well. Such is life.

3. Brandon Baxter (V5/TV2)
Baxter was actually applied on a bet with Skraal that I could write a profile faster than them. I won by an hour, and thus Baxter is perfect. At the time I feel like he was a realistic depiction of a high-school me, just a lot angrier and more misogynistic, but now it feels like he was less a self-insert and more just… a cartoon character I wanted to bring to normal. If you’re reading Baxter in V5, you’re reading Summer who’s great, Joe who’s great, and Miranda who’s great. I don’t think he does a lot of interesting things with his narrative but I’m proud of the death scene and his relationship with Summer. In SC2, I think he got really interesting. I was practicing more with closed-off narratives, and if you read him a certain way he’s actually trying to be a smart player and he’s pretty gay for Daniel. None of that managed to come out, though, because he inactive’d pretty damn hard. Oh well.

2. Dougie Sharpe (TV2)
Dougie Sharpe contains some of the best RP theory I’ve ever done in my entire life. He’s a character based on restraint, a character who’s narrative needed to be at least double his actual offers and speaking pieces. He hesitates, he makes the wrong decisions, and he constantly fails and doesn’t learn from his failures. I had the divine privilege to work with Irene, who was writing Lily alongside me, and the two of them crackled with this really cool energy. His story in relation to co-winner Jewel is fun, too, because Toben and I were playing hardball and not really planning anything save for two big chunks later in the game, and it was a thrill to kind of match wits with a master like him. I don’t think I won often in our little duels, but I got my licks in. Despite how much I loved Dougie and was passionate about his story, he became inactive right before Endgame, which is something I truly haven’t forgiven myself for ever since. His pregame also featured “Skinny” Trevor who was far more popular than Dougie ever was and I can find some solace in that.

1. Hansel Williams (V5)
This is nobody’s surprise. In many ways, Hansel is the reason that I fade in and out of SOTF. I fade out because Hansel’s story is one that I can’t see myself ever topping; he’s a big impact player, I worked very hard to be as active and attentive as possible during his run, he sees a lot of the game throughout his adventure, and his conclusion is as satisfying as I could’ve written at the time - or, more than likely, since. I fade back in because I made genuine friends during his story that have been in my life in some form or another since the curtain call. I’ll never forget Rugga and I clinging to one another as Endgame loomed, dmboogie, Deamon and Violent Medic trusting me with 66% of their cast’s deaths, Mimi telling me to knock it the fuck off with the cowboy accent garbage, Espi asking if he could shoot me at the very beginning, all of it. His story wasn’t supposed to be so murderous - initially I had planned for him to walk the island and make peace with people - but Espi’s request to have Theo shoot Hansel and Hansel’s weapon draw kind of changed the entire course of the landscape. I kind of stumbled into the kill record (which I’m thrilled to see broken) and purposely swerved into the thread record (which I’m annoyed to see tied) and I love all of it. Every last piece of it.

Intriguing. A thread to rank my characters, you say? I love all of my various children, but I suppose that I do play favorites just like any abusive mother. Perhaps I can share this favoritism among the site at large...

I will be doing this in an unusual format. Each of my rankings and their explanations are going to be an open letter of sorts, from me to each of them in turn. Perhaps you will find some value in reading them.

With that out of the way, let's start...

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8th. Naomi Young

Dear, sweet Naomi. Do not despair, you are not ranked this low because I think you are bad. Quite the contrary, I love and appreciate each and every one of you in your own ways. You are this low not because you were a failure, but merely because you were never allowed the time you needed to shine. You had the unfortunate timing of coming into play when I was going through my fairly strenuous schooling as part of the international program that I was enrolled in, and my friend, who had not participated in SOTF before and has not since, got rolled very early on. Due to a combination of my sympathies towards said friend and the unfortunate workload I was experiencing, you were sacrificed and became one of Jewel's many victims.

I don't think I ever understood your voice, and I was never really given the chance to explore it. Which is unfortunate, because perhaps you could have been just as beautiful as the others, if only you were allowed the chance. At the very least, you were I think the best example of my early writing style, with how minimalistic it was compared to the avalanche of words that it would later become. Your narrative was very focused on the physicality of your actions, something that seems bizarre to me now, reading it back. I have changed significantly since you once occupied space in my head, and you weren't gifted with the same kind of rich internal world that would come to define my later characters.

I still love you, though. Maybe you will get a second chance, one day, and be allowed to finally flourish. Perhaps not from me, but instead another trusted companion of mine...

7th. Sara Corlett

Sara, my dear bookworm. You have the dubious honor of being my sole brain demon conjured not from my own mind, but instead the mind of another. On a whim, when I saw that your original creator abandoned you for her own reasons, I decided to take you in, and treated you like one of my own, regardless. You might be disheartened to see that you rank this low, but know that it is not out of a lack of appreciation for you, but rather my love for the others just being greater in measure. You were a valuable experience, one of my first characters. Just like Naomi, your internal world and narrative is fairly sparse compared to what I am capable of now, but you still managed to have a fairly consistent voice, and served well in support of other characters, all the way up to the end.

The fact that the handler from whom I adopted you later came to me and said that she didn't think she could've done a better job is still one of my prouder moments on SOTF, and for that I will always treasure you, dear. Perhaps one day another child will steal away the exclusivity of your adopted status, but for now you remain as the sole holder of that title, and I love you all the same. I do not think you will receive a second chance, for I still do not feel like you are truly my own, but your story is complete as-is, and there's no need for you to suffer any more than you have already.

6th. Richard Smith

Richard, my moody boy, and currently my only son. Your snarky attitude and generally surly demeanor was a treat to experience, and you brought me numerous laughs and cheeky grins as you verbally lashed at basically everyone in your path. Your command over the art of smack-talk is unlikely to be exceeded by any of my other brain demons any time soon. I'm sorry that you're this low, I love you dearly I do, but unfortunately you never lived up to your full potential. Much like Naomi, your time was cut short by a combination of a lack of morale and my desire to throw a lifeline to someone in need. You were originally destined for much greater things, heights that you will never have a chance to live up to, but that doesn't detract from what you were.

If anything, you surprised me with your inherently good nature. You tried to be the bad guy, everyone expected you to be the bad guy (even me!), but you refused to fall to that. Lashing out as you may have, your better nature kept your actions in check, and in the end during your time on the island, you looked out for your friends, helped others wherever you could, and went down squaring up with a major threat to them, using everything up to and including your last breath to do as much damage as you could. Perhaps you will one day receive a second chance, with which you might be able to explore your heroics further, but for now you may rest. I think you earned it.

5th. Isabel Ramirez

Isabel... my bloodstained hibiscus... some might take offense to me ranking you so low...

It is... interesting, thinking about you, and thinking of what I would want to say about you. You are, unambiguously, the most immoral of my various brain demons, but I still love you for what you were, and what you accomplished. You were originally devised as an experiment, an homage to the sadistic killers of versions past. I was told that characters like you could not succeed, that they were always destined to be uninteresting and serve as nothing more than a vehicle for violence. With you, I sought to prove them wrong, I wanted to create someone who they could understand as a person, even if what you did was horrifying. Whether or not you succeeded is subjective, and ultimately up to whatever reader happens to dip into your headspace, but looking back upon you... I think you exceeded my expectations.

Maybe not as well as you could have, but for what you were, I love you. It is admittedly a more... hesitant love than with the others, due to your cruelty, but even you I cannot completely disregard my compassion for. You were responsible for much of my current writing style, as I typed out word after word justifying your various actions, trying to help the reader understand why you were the way you were. Regardless of success, channeling you made me a much better writer, I think, and in the end you left behind your lust for blood in my psyche, something I am currently still trying to sate.

I'm not adverse to bringing you back, trying to channel you in all your fury, trying to explore other sides of you. Perhaps you will get a second chance one day... especially so if a certain bloody boy gets his own...

4th. Maddie Wilcox

Ah... Maddie... you have the dubious honor of being both my very first character on SOTF and the character who shares my first name (despite not being a self insert, we have yet to get to her). There is much more special about you, though! You also have the distinction of having gotten farther into your version than any of my other brain demons (being my sole child to ever make the final 10), and also being the sole character of mine to ever receive a hero card. You should be proud of that fact! Despite my lack of experience, you were loved, and you achieved much. Reading back, your daring poisoning gambit, your kill on Nina (also the first ever kill for me, too!), your partnership with RJ, and your final moments all still hold up to this day.

That wasn't to say you were without issues, however. I believe have improved dramatically both as a writer and a roleplayer since I wrote you, but you were an important part of that development process. I understood your voice the most of any of my early characters (much more so than Sara and Naomi), and you provided much valuable experience for me because of that. I don't think you will ever receive a second chance (not from me, anyway), but don't despair. I treasure you for what you were, and everything that you had to teach me most of all.

3rd. Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope... how does one write a letter to someone so similar to oneself? You have the extremely dubious honor of being the closest thing to a complete self insert that I have written for SOTF. However, I will draw the distinction that you are still not me, not completely anyway. Instead, you are an idealized version of me, a version of me without all the trauma and mental health issues, a version of me who is far more capable than I am. You are the me that I wish that I could be. That was why I had to hurt you, because I hate me. Always have, always will, and I'm sorry that you weren't an exception to that.

But... I still love you for who you were, especially now, years later. You were the contrast to Isabel in every possible way, being a character who was good-natured at heart, who cared deeply about everyone around her, who wanted nothing more than an end to the violence and bloodshed. At least, until you shed all your blood. While you accomplished very little in the grand scheme of things, you still managed to sway others to your cause, having such a deep impact on several other characters that in the aftermath of your death you ended up taking two of them with you from the sheer despair caused by your passing. You were an ideological monolith, a defiant stance against the horror. You died for it, but you never allowed yourself to falter, and that was beautiful.

There were other directions you could have gone in had fate decreed as such, but much of that was incorporated into my later characters (and has yet to be incorporated into a few), to great success. Like the others before you, you laid the groundwork for much of what was to come, having a ton to teach me both about myself and about how to moralize within the context of the island, and for that I am deeply grateful.

Unfortunately, I don't think you will ever receive a second chance. Maybe someday I will change my mind and bring you back, but for now I think your life and your death stand tallest without any unnecessary additions.

2nd. Amber Yates

Amber! Much like with your in-character parents, you were my surprise child. It is rare for me to be so deeply and suddenly inspired to create a brand new character from the ground up during ongoing pregame (most of my brain demons are conjured years in advance), but you were the exception to that. What a glorious exception you were, too. You are not ranked this high because I had something that I wanted to do with you that I think I succeeded at. I never had any deep plans when it came to what I wanted to do with you, unlike most of the others. In fact, you were originally slated to die first out of my V7 cast, but you surprised me. The more I wrote with you, the more and more I grew to love you. Being with you, experiencing all your weird, wonderful, chaotic behavior... it was, well, intoxicating fun.

Even when my morale was at the lowest in V7, you still held your head high, still kept bringing me so much joy to write. You kept me in the game even when I wanted to quit, you are as much responsible for the success that I found as Marceline (we shall get to her). I treasure you, I love you dearly, you were exhilarating, despite (and because of) all your faults. Your death hurt so much for me to write, not only because I put you through so much pain, but also because I knew that the glee you brought me with your presence was coming to an end.

Do not despair though, my dear. More than any of the others, you will get your second chance, hopefully without getting shot in the head, and next time around you won't be playing second fiddle to...

1st. Marceline Carlson

Oh, Marceline...

I have so much to say to you, about you. You were my most ambitious child by far, designed with an intense slow burn degradation of morality in mind that might have never paid off, had RNG decreed it so. Writing you was inherently a gamble, you were either destined to flop and be forgotten or spread your wings and soar. And soar you did, to heights greater than I ever thought possible. You exemplified everything good about my writing and more, elevated it to a level beyond what I normally could reach. You were deeply introspective, emotional, philosophical, and thoughtful. You stood on the shoulders of giants, you used everything that all your fellows taught me with their respective runs, and you showed just how magnificent you could really be with all of it.

Once you reached your apex, I had more fun with you than I had with any of the others, somehow managing to exceed even Amber. You did everything I wanted you to do, better than I could have ever dreamed. My only regrets for you are not that you had your failures (though you did, you were not completely perfect), but rather that you weren't allowed to soar even higher than you did. I knew you would have, I believed in you wholeheartedly.

I still do.

What else is there for me to say? You're beautiful, sweetie, and I love you, despite everything you did and all the hurt you caused. I'm sorry it had to end the way it did, I'm sorry you couldn't keep your promise, but know that in spite of it all you'll live on forever, in my heart.

As it stands, I'm proud of everything you accomplished, and I don't think you will be getting a second chance anytime soon. Perhaps years down the line you'll get it... only without your girlfriend, which will make you a very different person from the outset. For now, though, you may get the rest that you've needed for so long. You were amazing, and you have nothing else you need to prove.

---

And that's all, so far, at least. Perhaps one of my new cast will come to take Marceline's throne, but for now she reigns supreme. To anyone reading this, I hope you got something out of it, be it insight into myself or insight as to the creation process of my characters.

The "Oh God Please Don't Read This" Tier:

17: Justin Moore (V2). Outside of a meme-y death that wasn't even written by me, Justin was a wasted character.

16: Steven Smith (V2). Originally had big plans for this character, but the feedback I received on Rob forced me to abandon Steven and place my focus elsewhere. He ended up as cannon fodder/swap card bait.

15: Kevin Kapustiak (V2). Kevin was traded to me in a character swap because baby_g didn't want to write him anymore. I didn't want to write him either, so the effort given was low. Don't bother with this character.

14: Dallas Reynolds (V4). Dallas was brought into V4 as a character to help RL Riz get his character off the ground. Dallas' death was supposed to have an impact on Darren Locke, but it didn't end up working out. I thought the idea of my death was good, but nothing else in this one-thread wonder is worth it.

13: Brenden Bedard and Dan Wolfe (V3). There was some site drama that led to me taking a hiatus and in a hissy fit I offed these two. Not worth your time at all.

The "Read This If You're Bored" Tier

12: Elizabeth Ebert (V2). The concept for Beth was that even though she was with her classmates, she was convinced that none of it was real. It was all special effects and TV magic. I actually really loved this concept as it would work for the second version, but I ended up having to trade Beth to another handler who in turn let her go inactive. Hey, at least she made it to the Top 10 before getting Mariavel'd.

11: Kyle Rizea (V2). Before V3 Riz there was V2 Riz. Originally this character was going to be a player, but the rolls fell a certain way and I wasn't able to flesh him out the way I'd hoped. Although the content is small with him, his death thread with Bryan was really fun to write and worth a quick glance if you're bored.

10: Alex Miller (V3 Escape). Holds the dubious distinction of being the first student killed by the terrorists on the island in the V3 escape. Alex was written to serve one purpose in that thread and I feel it was entertaining enough to warrant a quick read.

9: Joey Grey (V5). So I adopted Joey because of the itch to write again, but I never connected with the character. He was difficult to navigate, and in chatting with his previous handler, I couldn't get much information about how he wanted Joey to be played. I would constantly try to start threads or enter threads to get him some interaction, but the threads would either fall apart, or no one would come into the ones I started. Despite all of this, I ended up taking Joey to the final four where I am happy with the fight scene with Mara. Vicky is an awesome writer and this being our first real writing together, I am super happy with how it turned out. The way I wrote Joey's panicked desperation reaching wildly out to Mara, and Vicky writing Mara's response to that, I just really felt like it painted a vivid picture, which is something I wasn't able to do with Joey up until that point. Thank you Vicky for helping me get some redeemable form of entertainment out of a bland character.

The "It's Not My Best, But It'll Do" Tier

8. Brent Shanahan (V4). Small content, but his death thread alone is a...blast...to read. (If you read his death you'll understand the pun). Toben put it best in his comment on Brent's wiki page. Dodd and I are old writing buddies and I feel like you could sense our chemistry in this fight. It was a great thread to establish Staffan as a threat, and a little ultraviolence in SOTF never hurt anyone...except for Brent.

7. Staffan Kronwall (V4). Although he wasn't technically my character, I did take him over for what would be his final thread, and I decided to include him in my character list because I think he's a bit on the underrated side. Both Dodd's writing and my writing with him is worth checking out. Staffan isn't a terribly long character, but there is some definite quality here.

6. Dan Kensrue (V4). My self-inserts never seem to last long in SOTF. Again, not a ton of content with DK because the rolls hit me quick, but what little there is, I'm happy with. In his death thread, I got to RP with Crash/Aaron, and despite the bumps we had in V3, I think he and I found some good chemistry. Was DK a gamechanger? Not at all. Is he worth a read? I think so.

The "I Went Full Try-Hard" Tier

5. Nik Kronwall (V4). Nik was a very interesting character for me to write. He benefited from a solid pregame foundation. On the island, I tried really hard to communicate his inner struggle with his brother being portrayed as a killer. I had the benefit of him being paired up with a strong writer in Zombiexcreame, and a couple of strong threads overall. My only real regret with Nik aside from him being eliminated decently early, is that BetaKnight and I couldn't feasibly or realistically get Nik and Evie together before their deaths. I would have loved to write a more "love" driven arc with Nik protecting her, but it just wasn't in the cards.

4. Gabe McCallum (V3). I ended up taking over Gabe when RePeate had to stop the site. I was initially really worried that I might unintentionally have Gabe seem second fiddle to Steve, but looking back on it, I feel that I did Gabe justice. RePeate had talked to me before he left about what he wanted to happen to both Gabe and Evan, and I was able to make that happen. Evan dying from a situation caused by his jealousy, and Gabe being there when it happened was exactly what he was hoping for from those characters. Gabe also being broken down by the loss of Kara and his hunting down the Priestly siblings was really fun for me as a writer. It was a challenge because Gabe was driven by a killer desire for revenge after Viki's death, but it was a different killer desire from Riz. I'm also really proud of Gabe's death thread.

3. J.R. Rizzolo (V3). Fun fact, the J.R. never stood for John Rizzolo. His middle name was Rowen, the R last name just happened to work on that. I think maybe two people knew that little factoid.

I have talked at length about how much I hate my writing with Riz up until he kills Cara. Originally I was trying to make up for failing with Kyle Rizea in V2. For the first part of this character it was a massive failure. Trying to capitalize on the Joker-esque mania that was popular at that time, I realized how terrible it was reading and planned on using Riz as swap-card or hero-card fodder. By a sheer stroke of luck, Mimi's character Cara was rolled and she asked me if I'd like to write a scene with her to get the death in. I had originally thought that she would want Steve to kill Cara since Steve was a strong character from the start. Nope. I was wrong. She asked if Riz would do it, and to make it brutal. We fleshed out some ideas, and the scene came together. The ultraviolence and over-the-top feel to the scene set in motion a change in the writing style I would take with Riz. It was extravagant before, but now it was focused. It had direction. Mimi approaching me saved this character. Soon after that thread, Riz became a high kill count player and involved in some of my favourite scenes I've written. Although it doesn't get talked about much anymore, I think that the Riz vs Eddie fight is one of the best threads in V3. Same with The Answer. Same with our endgame thread. After Mimi saved this character I can honestly say that I am proud of what I did with him and was happy to have the first "villain win". The only reason I don't have Riz in the #2 spot is because of the shitty start to his arc.

2. Robert Adams (V2). Rob was my first SOTF character. I also think he is a compelling read. Much of his V2 adventure plays like a buddy cop movie with Matt Drew, but I really enjoyed it. I also think that when Rob splits off on his own, the writing remained strong. I was still a beginner to RP style writing, but writing with Rob felt very natural, and overall I think he is a good read. Rob also seems to be decently reviewed by the people who have done V2 RATs. Nostalgia for being my first SOTF character probably puts Rob a little high on the list, but I am happy with him and hope anyone interested in reading any of my characters gives him a shot.

1. Steve Digaetano (V3). Steve is my pride and joy and the standard to which I judged my V4 writing and any future writing I will do on this forum. Steve for me is the most complete character arc that I have. It is also the strongest character arc of any that I have written. Steve benefited from a very strong pregame showing, establishing solid relationships. He also benefited from a very strong start to the main game. Steve starts as this ultra confident ideal hero and is slowly and steadily beaten down by the game until he is finally killed. A lot of people already know this, but Steve was who I wanted to win V3 with. I did everything in my power to try and switch him out for Riz in the final rolls, but there were no hero cards or swap cards left. That is not to say I am not happy with Riz winning, but I had a plan mapped out for Steve that I will always feel disappointed I couldn't see through. I feel that Steve's journey on the island really showcased a lot of emotional high and lows. It worked out so well from a narrative perspective that every time something good would happen to Steve, the rolls or something would happen that would bring it crashing down on him. I have recently made the decision that I will be returning for V8. I can only hope that I can channel the energy I had while writing with Steve and give you all another character that I am truly proud of. If you are interested in getting a taste of what I may be able to bring to the table, please give Steve a read.

[+] Bad

15. Layla DeBerg (V7) - Barely a character. I planned doing stuff with her, was burnt out and decided to kill her of to leave the site. Skip.
14. Forrest Doe (TV2) - Down to earth character, but skip. Read Corin instead. Wish I could've done more with him and Saachi perhaps. Might bring him back.
13. Sebbo Boston (PV3) - Sebbo is trash. He has some scenes I'm kinda proud of and I'm happy I could finally thread with the legendary winner of V4, but he's not a good character. He might have some funny moments but especially in the end you could see that I did not put enough effort into him. Rereading him hurt, and after Sofia's death he was the worst character I've ever written. I'm sorry, Condor for not even having had the decency to write a proper death thread. Though Cassandra's reaction was hilarious, so you made it work, I guess.

[+] Ok

12. Mick Sexsmith (PV3P) - I gotta admit I kinda forgot he existed. It was fun writing with Poly, but PV3P's lack of deadlines kinda killed my motivation to write.
11. Cedric Isaacson (PV3) - He was fun to write and fun to thread with. He would've been ranked higher if his death post wasn't so messily written.
10. U.S.A. (PV3P) - He was in some fun threads, though PV3P meant he didn't really go anywhere and I think thesaurus as a character is a bad character concept.
9. Gervais Frans Lambotte (V7) - I really had a cool idea with him but then I left V7. Still, I have fond memories of the fight threads I've written with him.
8. Conrad Harrod (V6) - I'm proud of the things I wrote with Medic, plus I think his short island stay was cool. Not sure bout his messy death post. I think he's okay.

[+] Good aka. the better ok

7. Alessio Rigano (V6) - He was super fun to write and I wrote a lot with him. I think he had lots of cool scenes and ideas, but it was super messy and incoherant. He's not as bad as Gene but he's still super all over the place. Still, I think I've done with him what I wanted to do with him and I put in a lot of effort writing him. He's also has super many scenes I have fond memories of. He feels complete in a way, despite being not-so-good. I also love the Cam kill.
6. Gene Steward (TV2) - Ah, my first character. He shouldn't be ranked so high, but he was a blast to write. Nuff said.
5. Darius Van Dyke (V6) - The best of my V6 cast. I'm especially proud of his pregame. The reason why he ranks higher than Al is because Al is so fucking long, but Darius is kinda shorter and thus more consistent if that makes sense?

[+] Faves

4. Benny Murray (V7) - So the problem I had with Gene and Alessio is that so much of them was planned and I had so many ideas I wanted to implement that they became messy messes (Gene's World Tour, Al laying random traps), so in V7 I planned much less and was much more happy. Reacting to things instead of hoping things to go your way is much more fun. The reason why he is ranked higher than Gervais and Layla is because he huffed paint with Marco.
3. Arjen Kramer (V7) - I should actually rank him lower, because of his stupid death, because what Toxie and I had planned would've been much more epic than killing him off so early, but for the few scenes I wrote with Arjen, I'm pretty proud of them. Same rationale as Benny, but written a tiny bit longer.
2. Blaine Eno (SC2) - I don't think I did riser any justice, because her writing is vivid and fun to read while my writing is minimalistic, but I am proud of what I managed to do with him. I had lots of great scenes, it was experimental and it was fun to write.
1. Lance Adams (SC2) - I think he's the least wacky character I've written that isn't boring. Good job, me. Anyway, I was super happy with his storyline. I would've been happy to pull off an escape attempt on Mini.

6) Colin McCabe (V7) - So, some of the PV3P characters I wrote will rank below Colin if/when I get around to resolving some things, but with them excluded from the list at this stage, Colin sits at the problem. I’ve made pretty clear in the past that I’m not very fond of Colin and probably think of him as my biggest fumble as a handler. That comes down to a lot of factors, but the biggest problem at the end of the day was my inability to find a way to transfer all of the ideas I had going on in my head for Colin into something that could be clearly understood by a reader. Instead, Colin ends up feeling kind of one-note and becomes an increasingly limited instrument as he goes. There were parts of his writing which I did enjoy (his first thread on the island, both confrontations with Marco) but solid individual pieces can only do so much to cover for the shabby whole that I had crafted. I do not regret heroing him when I did, since it ended up benefiting another of my characters further down this list and it came at a time where I had truly lost direction for the character. It would’ve been possible for me to try to wrangle something out of Colin by that stage, but I think more was accomplished by letting him go when I felt there was no more to do.

5) Archibald “Archie” Harper (INTL) - At this stage, I’d say that Archie’s kind of my baseline “that was alright” sort of character. He didn’t run for long enough for his character to go anywhere, but his personality came across well and I think he helped to move his scenes along. Had he gotten more time, I probably would’ve riffed on some elements of early SOTF heroes and messed with some escape experimentation, but as it stands I think his attempt and eventual failure to manage a partnership with Jia Li works well enough on its own.

4) Sapphire Waters (V7) - Basically the same as Archie except Sapphire had spiders living under her skin, which gives her the edge. I’ve said before that Sapphire was intended to be a player, and that following the fight with Lorenzo she was going to become increasingly paranoid and eventually turn on Emmett. However, stuff happens, etc. and when Colin got rolled very early, Sapphire was in a much better position to get the axe. Similar to Archie, I think the story of her short and ill-fated team up with Emmett works well enough on its own. I would say that some aspects of Sapphire’s writing are a bit rougher than Archie’s, but she also feels like she’s got a bit more to her, which raises her up.

3) Thomas Buckley (V7) - The strongest of my V7 cast by quite a significant margin. There is some shakiness in parts of his early story where I’m still getting my footing for writing on the site, but unlike the other characters I had in that version, Thomas got more of a chance to get fleshed out as the game progressed. For this one I’ve gotta give props to MS, Ohm, and Sunny for giving me a lot stuff to build off of. If I did not have such excellent thread partners I probably would’ve gotten lost with Thomas eventually, but through the interactions with characters like Sean and Sakurako that I got to build consistent relationships, I managed to find my groove eventually. I’m particularly fond of Thomas’ death scene, which was almost identical to the way the whole thing would work out in my head and I’m very satisfied with the way it all turned out. I’d consider his placement the start of the sort of “upper tier” for my characters.

2) Gabriela Garcia-Campos (TV3) - Gabriela was my first crack at actually writing a player and there was a bit of a learning curve to it, particularly when it came to pitching kills in a crowded field, resulting in her getting a bit of a late start. However, she’s bolstered by Elliott-Blair in a way that helps give a boost to those early threads. Again, the main reason Gabriela worked out in my mind comes down to the people I wrote with. The folks who passed kids on to Gabriela for deaths consistently performed, which drove me to keep up my end of these scenes. Most of all, I think I owe RetroVenus for things working as well as they did. Without Elliott, Gabriela wouldn’t have gone down the path she did and Retro consistently put in work to really sell the dynamic between her and Elliott. I think Gabriela still had the gas in the tank to keep going a while longer, but it I’m quite happy with the finale she did get.

1) James Highchurch (TV3) - James is probably the most direct example of me having an idea of what I wanted for a character and being able to execute on that idea. There’s not a whole lot to say beyond that, honestly. By the end of James’ story, I wasn’t left with any lingering doubts about things left unsaid or anything like that. There are some rough spots here and there, some sentences that might have benefited from another draft, but the result feels very complete to me. Sure, things could have gone on longer and I did have some ideas about what to do in such circumstances, but that would have all been extra stuff. I’m not sure if James would be judged as my best character when viewed by others, but he is the one which I am most satisfied with.

UM hey hello yes!! I have a grand total of three (3) characters, but I'm ranking them ANYWAYS

4) Lucia (honorary member because she hasn't died yet) (Not because i don't like her)

3) Vasily was fun, sure- he was really fun to write in a way that my other characters aren't, but the issue is that by indulging in my own, creative hedonism I've basically created a clobbered together mess of concepts and gimmicks that never worked out. He's mellowed out in many senses in the end, but I can't exactly say he's my best read in retrospect. But it was always about in-the-moment for him, isn't it? And it gives good excuses on how all these gimmicks are metaphors for like identity or whatever.

2) Makaria is a mess, also kind of more fun while writing than in retrospect, but he was the kind of fun that stuck. In the end he didn't live long enough for me to write something that I regret, and that's kind of a blessing. Plus, I got creative enough to spin his death into something actually cool for once. Unlike him. He is a stinky nerd and very uncool.

1) Leah was a filler character that I thought about swap carding for Vasily until she kind of grew a mind of her own and choked me inside my own dreams. I'm not kidding. I dreamed of her before. She talked about philosophical bullshit and then died drifting along the sea. I'm terrified of her. When I die I'll have to confront her on the pale carriage, the death train, and I'll allow myself to be subsumed.