The V3 Read-A-thon Redux

Discuss anything and everything that has to do with SOTF here -- from your favorite character to comments and suggestions about the site! This forum also contains roleplaying guides for your benefit!
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Ruggahissy
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The V3 Read-A-thon Redux

#1

Post by Ruggahissy »

The rules are simple enough. You post that you want a character and I will give you one randomly from the list below. Read through the character and then post what you thought of them, though that is not mandatory. However, if you could, please let me know if you would or would not recommend the character to readers. If you were the writer of one of these characters and would not like them to be included, let me know and I will remove them from the list.

SOME SPECIFIC HOUSE RULES FOR V3

- Since the old V3 read-a-thon still had some lingering assignments hangin, if you are one of the people that still has a character and you want to keep that character for this read-a-thon as well, let me know and they will remain yours! Let me know as soon as possible though.

- If you don't like a character, that's cool! Not everyone likes everything nor is everything likable. However, please no personal attacks on the writers. Keep your criticisms to the character.

- We like to have fun, but try not to be too mean-spirited with your critiques. You'll get a slap on the wrist (or you'll be outfitted with a special mask and sent out to kill your friends).

- Some of the kids below have a content warning marked by an asterisk meaning they have extreme violence, sex or some other disturbing feature. If you do not want one of these kids, let me know and I'll get you a new one.

You got all that? Great. I've received the blessing of Persy, host of the OG V3 RAT and I've hired a young priest and an old priest. Please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times and try not to summon back any more elder gods.

[+] List

200th - Joshua Goodman *
- Heather Tilmitt * (Jimmy)
198th - Jason Foley
197th - Tyson Neills
196th - Lance Barrett *
195th - Charlie Burchman
194th - Tanya Bonneville
193rd - Tegan Bianco
192nd - Alex Steele (Poly)
191st - Karl Van Buren (Mara/ completed)
190th - Owen Fontaine
189th - Evelyn Richinson
188th - Luis Chezinski
187th - Kara Holmes
186th - Randy Flagg
185th - Rebbecca Bradbury
184th - Kristin Washington
183rd - Troy McCann
182nd - Brenden Bedard
181st - Dan Wolfe
180th - Adwin Green
179th - Katherine Blanco
178th - Nigel Gillespie (Jilly/completed)
177th - Ric Chee
176th - Ken Lawson (Frozen)
175th - Galen Neilson
174th - Nadine Willowbrook
173rd - Andy Walker (Tony)
172nd - Ivye Dewley (Brackie/completed)
171st - Viktor Kurchatov *
170th - Gabriel Theobaldt
169th - Trey Leyton
168th - Quale Hutchinson (Ohm)
167th - Simon Wood
166th - Courtney Blaggé
165th - Daniel Brent (Removed)
164th - Eduardo Trinidad-Villa
163rd - Monique St. Claire (Rattle)
162nd - Khrysta Lawrence
161st - Adonis Zorba
160th - Lilah Morgan
159th - Luke Rowan
158th - Anna Vaan
157th - Bradley Armstrong
156th - Julia Lauper (Prim)
155th - Keiji Tanaka
154th - Kode Hairesu *
153rd - Mortimer Jones *
152nd - Braden Marsh * (Yugi)
151st - Jodene Zalack (Jimmy)
150th - Joe Gai
149th - Sharon Kulikov
148th - Paul Smith *
147th - Christian Rydell
146th - Serenity Halos
145th - Anthony Burbank (Brackie/completed)
144th - Jeff Marontate
143rd - Guy Rapide *
142nd - Mary McKay *
141st - Trinity Sparks
140th - Jazzalyn Creed
139th - Wednesday Ryan
138th - Melissa Diaz (Ohm)
137th - Jessica Jones
136th - Derrick Taggart
135th - Nathanial Harris *
134th - Corbin Arlen (Yona)
133rd - Reg Robson
132nd - John Cox
131st - Elizabeth Davidson (Ohm)
130th - Jake Henkie
129th - Joey McHaimond
128th - Herman Johnson (Kermit)
127th - Jeff Thorne
126th - Francis Temple (Brackie/completed)
125th - Olivia Swan
124th - Sloan Henriksen (Jilly/completed)
123rd - Arty Williams (Mara/completed)
122nd - Andy McCann
121st - Ivan Roeghmills
120th - Aidan Kelly
119th - Josh Novikov
118th - Dennis Bernard (Ohm)
117th - Lucy Arber
116th - Pascal Stonely
115th - Antonio Legarda (Impe)
114th - Nick Jones
113th - Cara Scholte
112th - Ryan Gilbert
111th - Afra Jacinth
110th - Eicca Hietala
109th - Evan Gage (Toben)
108th - Jim Middleton
107th - Kathleen Martin
106th - Shawn Waits (Cicada)
105th - Raven Lawrence (Jilly)
104th - Petra Andrews
103rd - Branca Braunstein (Aura)
102nd - James Migato
101st - Clive Maxwell
100th - Anton Wykowsku
99th - Dennis McDonald
98th - Briana North
97th - Edgar Hoskins
96th - Dane Zygmunt (Jill)
95th - Leo Curtis
94th - Evan Angler (Rugga)
93rd - Abel Williams
92nd - Vera Lang
91st - Joseph Cande
90th - James Martinek
89th - Heath Trennoby
88th - Lauren Howard
87th - Anna Grout
86th - Lucy O'Donnell (Dodd)
85th - Dean Portman
84th - Alex Miller
83rd - Sean O'Cann
82nd - Maxie Dasai *
81st - Izzy Cheung
80th - Dorian Ibanescu
79th - Ianto Murphy
78th - Andrea Vanlandingham
77th - Neil Sinclair (Blast)
76th - Viki Valentine
75th - Daniel Carvalho
74th - Carson Baye (Dodd)
73rd - Daniel Clifford
72nd - Liam Black
71st - Michael Anders (Ohm)
70th - Nicholas Nutbrown
69th - Hannah Rose
68th - James Trejo
67th - Margaret Tweedy
66th - Shane Rafferty (Jilly/completed)
65th - Sato Koizumi
64th - Melina Frost *
63rd - Jessa Vanallen *
62nd - Hayden O'Guinn (Brackie/completed)
61st - James Ellet
60th - Will Sigurbjornsson *
59th - Stephanie Evans
58th - Darnell Butler (removed)
57th - Keith Jackson *
56th - Brad Kavanagh (Rugga/completed)
55th - Matthew Wittany
54th - Bill Ritch
53rd - John Sheppard
52nd - Kallie Majors
51st - Terrie Brightwell
50th - Alice Jones
49th - Julie Mikan
48th - Dominica Shapiro
47th - Kyrie Joseph
46th - Denise Dupuis
45th - Marnie Yaguchi (Blast)
44th - Rio Koizumi (Pip)
43rd - Adam Dodd
42nd - Warren Pace
41st - Mark Tavarian
40th - Dawn Beckworth (Toben)
39th - Amanda Redder
38th - Becky Holt
37th - Velvet Retsiloh
36th - Bobby Jacks
35th - Jonathan Lancer (Toben)
34th - Morgan Ackland (Crossbow)
33rd - Kathy Holden (Kermit)
32nd - Anna Kateridge
31st - Kimmy Redmond (Cicada)
30th - Elizabeth Priestly
29th - Madison Conner
28th - Dorian Sanders (Dodd)
27th - Gabe McCallum (Jimmy)
26th - Renee Valenti
25th - Rick Holeman
24th - Emma Babineaux (kermit)
23rd - Wade Wilson
22nd - Quincy Archer
21st - Shameeca Mitchell
20th - Noah Jacobs
19th - Lyn Burbank * (Dodd)
18th - Morgan Green
17th - Dacey Ashcroft
16th - Danielle Champney
15th - Dante Cooper (Removed)
14th - Jordan Redfield (Frozen)
13th - Eris Marquis
12th - Harry Tsai (Chad)
11th - Nicole Husher (Removed)
10th - Adam Reeves * (Removed)
9th - Steve Digaetano
8th - Ryan Atwell
7th - Edward Sullivan
6th - James Brown (Lore)
5th - Alexis Machina
4th - Lenny Priestly
3rd - Trish McCarroll
RUNNER UP - Lulu Altaire (Mara)
Winner -J. R. Rizzolo *
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Ruggahissy
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#2

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Jimmydalad]

Ok, so apparently Jodene is one of Dodd's characters, returning to the site and going under the name Lucid, who tried to be the dullest character possible and see if anyone recognised it was him. That's something I'll need to keep in mind coming into this.

From the get go, what we know about Jodene is that she's average. Her averageness is extremely painful. Her appearance and biography make a total of two paragraphs, so we don't get much else from her apart from how she's "a fairly average looking girl". For some reason we get a lot of variations of "Jodene is not very ___ nor is she very ___" throughout and I think Dodd did so with the intent of emphasising just how boring she is. The only real defining things about her physical appearance apart from her blonde hair and blue eyes are her large bust that she tries to show off and her penchant for tight clothing, though we have no indication she was wearing said tight clothing on the island.

One thing that caught me by surprise was that she was 19 years old, yet there's nothing in her profile stating why she was still in the 12th grade. So, she used to think she wanted to be a police officer, but after watching a career studies documentary, she decides she wants to be a hair stylist? We don't get any reason she does this, so I'm just going to assume she realized she wasn't smart enough to be a policeman and aimed low with her expectations. This is because one of the only bits of personality I can gleam from her profile is that she has a bit of an inferiority complex being compared to her smarter siblings. Some of her advantages and disadvantages are highly questionable or irrelevant such as the fact that she has a nice singing voice. Her intelligence as a disadvantage is questionable because even though her profile says she isn't smart, it also says she's isn't stupid and I don't really think average intelligence is really a bad thing compared to other kids. Also, none of her hobbies and interests are even mentioned in the biography, but I attribute that to early version weirdness more than anything.

Her first thread of three is a short oneshot where we see how Jodene finds the motivation to play the game. It's at this point I realise that she's one of the kids who magically turns up around day 3, but at least Dodd provides justification for her absence by stating that she'd just been lost in the jungle and hadn't seen anyone the entire time. It may not be the strongest justification, but at least it's there and services Jodene's plot. It's about as generic a villain birth plot is, she gets frustrated with being lost, then looks at her weapon and thinks "this would be something a player wants". She then quickly concludes, like any logical and well-grounded person, that playing is the only way to live because no one had her back. She also justifies that people were already playing and that if she won, she'd stand out which ties into her whole inferiority complex. While there's nothing majorly wrong with it apart from a few missing apostrophes here and there, it's not very interesting. One must wonder why Jodene didn't think about just going in a single direction like she does at the end of this thread in the last two days, but at least she gets out of the jungle. It's nice that there's a reason more than just "oooh I wanna kill" with the inferiority complex thing, but it's only mentioned here and there in the first thread and then never touched upon again.

We join Jolene in Lilacs and Lolitas, not seeming to have many hang ups with the thought of killing her classmates and encounters the group of Khrysta, Corbin, Mary, Matthew, and Neil checking out dead kids' collars to see how they work. Coincidentally, we have two examples of handler incest in this thread with Mary and Jolene both being played by Dodd while Corbin and Neil are both played by Theseus. I like how Jodene uses her averageness to her advantage. While there isn't much to her narrative from this point on apart from planning out Khrysta's death, it's nice to see the idea being explore at least a little. The announcement goes out and she gets disdainful because people are sad about it, particularly Matt. It seemed like those few thoughts back in the jungle were all it took for the killer switch to be entirely flipped. She decides to take out Khrysta as the leader of the group and some lingering displeasure from Khrysta's treatment of her at home. Some more planning out the kill in her head and small interactions with Khyrsta about the collars, a few more missing apostrophes and misspellings, and then she takes out her knife and thrusts it upwards through Khrysta's jaw. It's at this point we see Dodd piloting Jodene after 3 weeks of him not posting, having dropped Lucid because he found it too difficult to continue writing intentionally badly, and takes her to her death by Wade in The Pretender, but not before getting hit in the leg by one of the bullets Corbin started to fire rapidly. At this point, Dodd's keeping up the façade by telling Meg as Lucid that he was having computer issues and couldn't stay active with her anymore. Honestly, trying to piece the OOC machinations of Dodd is much more interesting than anything Jodene does and were highlights of the reading experience of Jodene.

And we enter the inactive purge thread of The Pretender, featuring another of Dodd's characters, Wade Wilson. At this point, Wade has completely lost the concept of a fourth wall, talking with the narrator, and has just seen Braden, Joe, Kobe, and Mortimer as demonic skeletons for some reason. Jodene, who at this point is now regretting being branded a killer and wants to find a group. Trying to catch up to the group of boys, she manages to walk in while Wade is in the middle of his massacre. She gasps and freezes in fear, getting the attention of Wade. Seeing her as a succubus and blaming Adam Dodd, he tosses a spear at her which pierces her torso and causes her death.

The little bit that Dodd writes for her is much better quality than the rest of Jodene's time on the island, but I've decided not to include it in my analysis because it was an inactive death, even if Lucid and Dodd are the same person.

Jodene's a barebones player and there's nearly nothing that makes her unique. Apart from a few missing apostrophes and misspellings, there's nothing majorly wrong with the writing. The issue is that the content is generic and boring, which is what Dodd was trying to achieve so in a way it's pretty brilliant how uninspiring a character Jodene was. Jodene is fun to look back on with the knowledge of Dodd's OOC machinations and there was a potential for someone as generic as Jodene to be interesting, as I mentioned in the Lilacs and Lolitas thread. However, that was never Dodd's intentions with Jodene. Jodene was made to be intentionally bad and boring and it's a testament to how good Dodd's writing usually is that no one caught onto the truth of Lucid until he came back. Screw you Dodd for making me read one of the most generic characters in SOTF history.

Personal Highlights:

Her parents still support Jodene in her goals, but she always wonders how things would be if she were just a little bit smarter. – This sentence from her profile made me cackle.

[[i hope this is fine for a first post, ive tried to read some others and make mine sort of the same!]] – Here we see Dodd mimicking a first-time poster in SOTF. Once you realise this is Dodd, the OOC stuff becomes infinitely more interesting than anything Jodene does.

A person as nonthreatening as Jodene might be able to surprise them, and if they had good weapons, it might prove to be a good idea. – This is the start and end of an interesting idea that could've been explored with Jodene and I'm a little sad it never was.

((As per Lucid's computer issues that Meg has explained to me, I'm going to go ahead and take control of Jodene so this thread will ...y'know, move along a little bit.)) – More of OOC Dodd machinations. It's impressive how long he managed to keep this a secret until he came back around November of last year.

Hit me with another character.
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Ruggahissy
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#3

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Cactus]

All right. So as part of my penance for the horrors that I inflicted upon some of you in this very read-a-thon (and will likely inflict upon you), I am also participating.

Thankfully, I start off lightly, with a character who was created solely for the escape. So away we go, let's check out Lucy O'Donnell.
[+] Lucy

Profile:

Being a Mistuko character, this tends to be a little light on the profile side. A lot of stuff got through in the v3 era, and so I'm not entirely shocked this got put through. Lucy is fairly mundane until we get to the section of her biography where she's a "hacking wiz" at sixteen. Worth noting is that she's skipped a grade too, so she's basically a Jack O'Connor/Shinji Mimura/Lex Murphy (IN JURASSIC PARK) type who's a technical genius in high school.

Honestly, as fun as it is in one of the above cases (maybe two, Shinji was cool), it gives me pause and I kind of sigh. Alas, we leave off with a reminder that profiles aren't what they are now.

Lucy was a shining star… but that star was soon to fade away…
Anywho.

Pregame:

There is but one thread. Hurray!

Lucy is at the bonfire party deal because Andrea Vandlandingham invited her, and while she's not a social butterfly, Andrew is "always nice to her" and so she showed up. She thanks the host for being invited, and then... she legit vanishes. I just sorted through ten pages and she's introduced and does not reappear. So, that's the extent of her pregame. Cool beans.

Game:

The first (and only) thread that Lucy shows up in is called "Freedom or Bust". Shit. This is the escape thread. I know it well. A certain past version of me might show up several times. I'll try and reduce the cringe and just try to find this poor girl. Which isn't hard, since she shows up at the beginning.

In what's a similar thing to what happened to Ryan Atwell/Dean Portman and others, Lucy is said to have been holed up in the armory for the past week, with Andrea Vanlandingham, Derrick Taggart and Jessica Jones, but this is just a narrative trick since this was never roleplayed. Since Andrea had a laptop as an assigned weapon, Lucy took to it with her hacking skills and managed to hack in to Danya's systems. I struggle to sustain my disbelief here in 2018, but then I remember that I had a large hand in crafting this plot and I slap myself and continue. Lucy manages to get the schematics for the collars, and once Jack O'Connor's old virus infects Danya's systems, they quickly realize the cameras in the armoury are off, and start to work on the collars.

Lo and behold, they get them off, so we have four students sitting around in the warehouse with no collars on. They debate on whether they should just escape or try and find people to save, and Andrea decides that she's going to try and save as many as she can.

They're suddenly joined by - holy shit, Dean Portman actually exists - another kid, and we get a Lucy post from her actual handler (the prior had been a Megami post), and she fills in a few more of the gaps in what happened to Lucy, essentially just going over the same sort of thing from a different Lucy perspective. It feels a lot like just a filler post, because a lot of these were gone over in the first post of the thread.

More people begin to show up - Alex Miller, Maxie Dasai and Sean O'Cann all stumble in, and suddenly Lucy is taken over by Namira (what up, Elena!), and she gets a whole hell of a lot more depth. Immediately, I'm liking Lucy a lot more, as Elena gives her a voice more becoming of her profile and she starts feeling a lot more like a three-dimensional character. She helps Dean get his collar off (having to stand on a chair to do it, due to his height, which I think is a nice detail). She gets Dean's collar off, and is overwhelmed by having another person to add to their motley crew, so she hugs him, and is kind of embarrassed by it. Feeling overwhelmed and needing some air, she goes to the armoury entrance where she runs in to Alex Miller and frees him, too.

Maxie Dasai shows up post-Reeves encounter (ugh) and Lucy shows her kindness, trying to comfort her and finding her some clothes (as she's standing around topless), mentally chastising the guys for staring, though I don't know if they were necessarily. Maxie and Sean have their collars removed, and in pops Neil Sinclair to join the party.

Following closely behind is he of the still-unknown fate, Dorian Ibanescu, along with Izzy Cheung and Ianto Murphy. This thread is getting crowded as hell. One thing that's admittedly confusing the hell out of me is that certain characters - Andrea and Lucy mainly, keep getting shifted between handlers. Thankfully for Lucy, Elena seems to have taken over for good, which immediately makes her one of the stronger characters in the thread. She doesn't really continue to do much except remove collars from the newcomers, but you start getting a sense of optimism with her as their group grows, which is a nice touch.

At this point, Adam Dodd, Bill Ritch, and John Sheppard walk into the thread in what is literally a single line post, followed by:
((I will edit this into something that reads more like a real post later, I just won't have time to do the posting that I need to do with this))
That's a dirty lie and whomever posted that should be ashamed of themselves.
Bill Ritch at least partially redeems that piss-poor effort with a post of his own, and they're joined by Dominica Shapiro as well. Lucy is essentially being used as a tool at this point, solely to deactivate all of the collars. Neil gets up and makes a pretty good speech, and Marnie Yaguchi (an also as-of-now fateless V3 character) shows up too. Since this is Lucy's write-up, I'm skimming through a lot of these other posts, but there's some decent stuff in here.

At this point, Andrea leaves to try and find more kids, and takes the collars off everyone who's arrived, with a particular point of mention to Adam Dodd. She feels a whole myriad of emotions about getting his collar off, but doesn't say anything to him about it.

She then pays attention to Neil, who she's a little pissed off with because of his rah-rah speech and "joining SADD" that he's trying to get everyone to do. She's pretty cheesed that he managed to get a bunch of people killed and really doesn't want him to be the leader of this group. Her retort manages to shut Neil up but good and drives him to tears. Lucy's showing a bit of a spine, which is nice.

At this point I've lost track of how many people are coming and going. Darnell Butler shows up, as do Brad Kavanagh and Terri Brightwell, Denise Dupuis comes and goes, and eventually at some point Darnell Butler points his gun at Adam Dodd and essentially says "we're not taking this guy with us" which if I remember correctly was half Kyle trying to kill Dodd as revenge for him winning V1, and half just being typically aggressive.

Anyhow, Dodd responds to this in a very dickish speech that essentially downplays the accomplishments of the V3 kids and feels incredibly self-important. I think whomever his handler was should probably be shamed, and should be reminded of said shame repeatedly. What a jerk. Anyway, Dodd comes off as a huge jerk here, and some of the kids like Matt Wittany and Neil Sinclair back him, but Lucy in particular takes umbrage with Dodd's referring to getting the collars off as "the easy part" and lambastes him. The lack of sleep is getting to her and she immediately backs off, but her point's made. Brad joins the "WTF Dodd" party and part of me is wishing that they'd just overruled and shot him there. Wish the handler had seen the forest for the trees there.

As Darnell and Adam argue over issues that may-or-may-not actually stem from two versions prior and have more OOC basis than IC, Lucy is like "k cool guyz" and goes to help Denise remove her collar, letting her know that Andrea's left to go find more people. Denise peaces out and eventually, Mr. One-Eyed-Terrorist himself Garnett shows up to basically be like "hey, let's go eh?" and a couple of them aren't about to look a gift horse in the face, so they go. Alex Miller has had enough of this arguing and decides it's probably easier to just go win the game, so he turns around and eats a bullet in the face out of nowhere.

Here come the rest of the terrorists! Yay! That means this thread is mercifully almost over.

As Alex bites the dust, everyone is mobilized into action, Dodd again trying to take charge but doing some semi-successfully. Half the students leave the thread and half decide to stay and buy the others some time. Lucy decides to stay to try and fight, and as soon as the shooting starts, she takes a bullet in the chest.

After a small flashback to her family and parents (and a locket that's part of her profile that's never otherwise mentioned), and being talked in to the fateful trip, Lucy dies.
So... do I recommend Lucy? Honestly, I don't. I said above at some point that she's basically a tool to be used, one that shifts from Mitsuko to Megami to Mitsuko and finally to Elena, who's really the only one who attempts to capture her voice and give her true feelings. She's written competently, as is the usual for Elena, but her part in the escape and the overall cluster-fuck of the Armoury makes it hard for me to say "yeah, read her, she's great". She's okay, but her entire story is the one thread, and if you read someone like Brad or Neil or Dodd or someone instead, you get her whole story.

I think she's skippable unless you're reading the escape. She's an integral tool for that but she doesn't amount to much as a character.

I'll take another, I guess.
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Ruggahissy
Posts: 2565
Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2018 4:13 pm

#4

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Crossbowpig]

This may be the first time that someone who's written a character that I have to read has been around to answer questions as I was reading. Nice! I abused this.
[+] Morgan
Morgan Ackland seems like an average kid at first, with a cursory glance over her profile, but problems start to arise in terms of realism the deeper in you read. Like, who would call a club the Key Club? There's probably some dumb joke to be made about being in a club called the Key Club, if not by me, at least by other high school kids. Come on, really? Not real.

Appearance-wise, she's pretty plain. We see a lot of the opinionated tone that appearance sections—especially those of girls—often took on in the early versions.
Jamers wrote:
While not stunning by any means, Morgan isn't exactly hard to look at.
Business Jamers wrote:
All in all, she dressed as you'd expect your average casual office worker would.
On a more serious note, there are so, so many places that this could have gone wrong on a profile level but somehow didn't. For example, I can see her precociousness playing out much, much differently. Though it's ultimately not explained in much detail, I can easily see her being more adult turning into her being more adult but that's probably just the V2 talking. I like how her relationship with James reads in the profile too, and that they decide to stay in contact after their break up. She gets a lint roller because the world likes making people suffer.

Morgan and James start a good ways in to the game. Like, several months past game start. I think they're on day seven, or something, because of an offhand comment that Morgan makes, but I'm unsure.

So I asked!
Exhibit A wrote:
CrossBowPig - Today at 2:48 PM
hey James, what day of the game did Morgan start on?

simple country tech blogger - Today at 2:48 PM
oh man no clue
all my kids were late-game tho
i joined a few months before v3 ended

CrossBowPig - Today at 2:49 PM
she mentions her and Insert!James running around for six days, do you think Day Seven is a reasonable time for her to have started?

simple country tech blogger - Today at 2:49 PM
probably! i would've asked aaron or read back to figure it out
i'm just glad someone is suffering more than me today
I've heard that this was basically a trend that got real bad around V3, where, in the words of someone whose name I forget, endgame was hard to pay attention to because everyone in it had started midway through the game and nobody was really rooting for them. I don't know to what extent this'll reflect on Morgan, given that I'm here for her and her specifically, but coming from a time in which you have just about a month or so to get your kids on the island before first rolls, it's a little jarring, as was the SOTF fandom elsewhere in the thread but that's not what I'm here for anyways.

The pair find an abandoned laptop and phone, probably belonging to someone that died or something. Her false hopes over the phone working are shattered, like the phone eventually is when she hurls it at a tree, when it powers on only to die again. James attempts to calm her logical mind down, but fails, because this is the side of her that gets stressed out and has a real bad time compartmentalizing. They have a little debate over whether or not they wanna go around killing people, and the prevailing viewpoint is Morgan's. She ditches James because she thinks that he's going to start killing, and he runs after her, not wanting to leave her behind.

The next thread is a toughie. Morgan and James are barely in it, and this group of nobodies called S.A.D.D. come in and S.T.I.N.K. up the place.
Exhibit B wrote:
CrossBowPig - Today at 2:11 PM
there are too many kids in here that are not mine

simple country tech blogger - Today at 2:13 PM
@CrossBowPig i have never been known for my speedy posting. there is a lot inbtwn my stuff
Plus there's this awful bit where this attention hog Ninja Joe comes in and goes into a coma.
Ninja Joestfuckingkillmealready wrote:
"HELLO?" He yelled. "HI. DOES ANYONE THERE...uh...KNOW...HOW TO...MEDICINE?" Grammar would be so proud. "BECAUSE THERE WAS THIS GUY AND HE HAD A FORK AND HE STABBED ME AND MY BANDAGES AREN'T STICKY AND NOW THE WORLD IS SPINNING." Joe slid down the door, ending up on the ground. "I THINK I'M GONNA TAKE A NAP NOW...GNIGHT." He blurted out before closing his eyes and passing out.
He reminds me of someone I knew, in that he is obnoxious, thinks he is important, and gets in the way of a good story.

But none of these distractions are really important. What's important is that Morgan and James move some corpses around and get separated, because that's all that happens. They interact with some people that I don't care about that write way too long posts, and then they get separated by a danger zone announcement. For the record, James leaves Morgan behind, despite caring so much that he wanted to follow her out of the last thread. The People find them pretty suspect for carrying around bodies, but Morgan and Morgan and James and Morgan dismiss this as just one of their eccentricities, but also a respect for the dead thing. The People find this acceptable and give them a wristband that I don't think either of them wind up accepting. I don't know. I read the summary for this one because I didn't want to sift through four pages of intermittent Mitsuko ellipsis-es and other miscellaneous nonsense.

Legit, Mitsuko, I count forty five ellipsis-es in your two posts in this thread. Chill out, there.

The next thread is the one where Morgan dies, and you probably already know about this one. If you don't, this one word should probably sum it up.
beep wrote:
BEEP
Or something like that. There's also this sentence
Exhibit C wrote:
A dribbling of what wasson her jacked used her breasts to pick up momentum an dripped onto her neck.
CrossBowPig - Today at 2:15 PM
"A dribbling of what wasson her jacked used her breasts to pick up momentum an dripped onto her neck."
i am not able to parse this sentence
halp

simple country tech blogger - Today at 2:16 PM
wait what even is that
please tell me i didn't write that

CrossBowPig - Today at 2:16 PM
this sentence? a morgan sentence

simple country tech blogger - Today at 2:16 PM
jesus
i don't know. i'm sorry

CrossBowPig - Today at 2:17 PM
lol it's fine
just know that this is getting quoted in my writeup fo sho'

simple country tech blogger - Today at 2:17 PM
it's ok i'm not crying
Now, there are some aspects of this format fuckery that, contrary to what you might believe, actually do work. For one thing, I like how the normally formatted paragraphs are broken up, even if a lot of them could do with an extra space between the two because that's just how you write things mmkay? And for what it's worth, I like the different columns as a concept. Having read House of Leaves myself, I'm partial to format screws in a lot of ways, and I'm probably more tolerant than most when it comes to them being done in a SOTF format. They should be used sparingly, but if you're going to go all out with them, use them at the end of a character's life. See the death of Kasumi White in Second Chances Dos over on the Mini site for a good example of this being done right.

What doesn't work here is everything else. I don't like beep being in red. The big text is more than a little obnoxious. The big boom at the end is similarly gross. Different alignments of text can work in the right context, but just throwing the same word different places on the page is a little fucky. That grayout fadeout at the end kinda sucks when it's done that fast, and when the death tag is in full view right there too.

Morgan dies of getting collarsploded via exhaustion.

For what it's worth, Handler!James is remorseful.
I think I'd recommend reading through Morgan's last couple of posts as a crash course in why it might not be a good idea to go crazy with your formatting on this website that we call home, but I don't know if the rest of her story is really worth reading. Other than the format fuckery, she's pretty bland. Sorry if I didn't cover this very comprehensively, I have a bad headache from circumstances unrelated to SOTF right now and I'm also tired.

Could I get another drink, barkeep? I'm feeling a bit dry over here.
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Ruggahissy
Posts: 2565
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#5

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Kermit]

ugh damn time police

Herman Johnson is named Herman.

Pictured: Herman

Image

Profile!
Hobbies and Interests wrote:FPS games, survival horror games, media tropes, trying to convince people he knows what he's doing.
I'm Herman?!

yeah so these seem like standard fare v3 nerdy kid hobbies. Nothing I'd consider bad, but nothing real original either (original doesn't necessarily mean good though motions towards the kid who had torturing animals as his hobby. He's got the standard v3 nerdy kid appearance. I feel like saying anything more will be redundant, so yeah he's a standard v3 nerdy kid/pseudo SI.
The First Line of His bio wrote:You really want to know about this guy? Well Ok. But, it's going to be boring.


AaAaaAaAaAAAAaaAAaAAAAaaAHhHhHHhhHHHhHHhHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok so TLDR Herman's life sucks and he's a nerd. Also he lives in Jersey City even though Southridge is in California (wow that must be one long commute)

also also he got v1!Dodd's AUTHENTIC wow shotgun so that's a thing i guess.

Pregame!

haha you thought he would have pregame C:
Ever since he woke up, Herman had ran
shit dude this is on day 5 you've got some major fucking stamina. Should've been an olympic athlete instead of a [insert nerd profession here].

Herman doesn't know why he is on the island because he missed the first announcement because he was panicked, but, like, that's not when they tell you how SOTF works so im a bit confuddled. Herman, not knowing how to chill, is so fucking panicked that he hasn't eaten or opened his bag. FOR FIVE DAYS THIS IS DAY 5 WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

i though the madness wouldn't pop up yet :C darn

Herman sits down in the hollow tree and eats/drinks/opens his backpack because he remembered that he is a living being that requires sustenance or something yay herman! Jimmy Trejo's here now ( :clap: YES :clap: BLAST :clap: except he hasn't gone inactive yet so it's not blast writing him :c )!
JIMMY MY BOY wrote: Whether he came out of the game dead or alive, he had already lost, but he would prefer to survive.


I really like this quote c:

Jimmy cannot see too good so he uses his ELITE ECHOLOCATION SKILLZ to find Herman and then he takes out his blind-person cane and pretends to be a 100% blind person. He walks into the tree and sits down, AND BEFORE HERMAN CAN REACT...

Image

no...

Image

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOInjk nnjk nkjnINJDAOIDJNKFN KNRJKNJKEHIUHIH328 U98298298 289289'']]]]DP-=D-D -D-D-D-

:CCCCCCCC

cave centipedes crawl out of kermit's eyes

Melina pops out of a bush and is like "oh hello boys..... ;)...... me and my girls need a place to stay...... ;)...... would you please let us in...... ;)...... i hope you don't mind if we take our shirts off, they're restricting our large voluptuous breasts...... ;)...... ;)...... ;)...... ;)". Renee's here too and she wants to kill melina because renee is a good person occasionally, but for now she needs the P O I S O N A N G L E S for protection from Darn "Blood Boy" Hecker, so she's not doing any of that just yet.

Herman's like "hmmmmm jimmy might be blind but he also might not be blind hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" and then immediately sees through Melina's ruse because she's not very good at manipulation. Herman runs the fuck away! Oh and here's Dacey yay ??????

wow ok there goes the 5th announcement. Herman falls down at Dacey's feet because he's a doofus and then goes inactive because his handler didn't know rolls were a thing

there's other stuff happening in the thread RE: melina and friends/also laeiiaieaiel burbank but im ignoring it because herman's not there to see it so >:-() oh no nevermind melina's flailing an axe at dacey




sorry im looking at unicode characters wow ֎Ѡܓ߄௵࿐࿙✀✁✂✃✄ look at all these scissors wow



☭ All ☭ right ☭ comrades ☭ so ☭ let's ☭ get ☭ back ☭ on ☭ track ☭ and ☭ go ☭ redistribute ☭ the ☭ wealth ☭ of ☭ the ☭ bourgeoisie ☭ pig ☭ Herman ☭ Johnson ☭.
Jimmy's brain thoughts wrote: I hope you bitches burn.
im jimmy im gonna set all of you on fire AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA AAAahHAH

wow unicode instills the same madness in me as v2 does. Weird.
Elena what wrote: From where Dacey was standing, Melina didn't look like butter.
wrong melina is butter spreads melina on toast and eats her hehehehehehe

So everyone's killing one another now and OH NO MITSUKO IS HANDLING HERMAN NOW which is a bad omen for herman's odds of surviving this post.
herman no! wrote: No… it was that smile… that horrible smile that she wore. She approached them so cheerily… it disturbed him to no end
RUN HERMAN RUN
HEEEEEEEERRRRRMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAN wrote: Could he do it? Could he shoot her?
yes herman shoot her do it do it do it do it do it
melinaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa wrote: "Y'know, you're only delaying the inevitable… I don't understand why you can't just give it up. You men and your pride. Is that it? Don't want to have your pitiful little life taken away by someone with breasts? It's a fucking waste of time to try and get away. I'm going to enjoy ripping that worthless pride from your trembling bodies as I kill you. That's right. I'M going to end that miserable little thing you call a li-"
SeEE ThIS iS whAt wOuLD'Ve HaPpeNeD If KiLLarY hAD woN ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 1 1 1 1 11 1

Laeaaeil's thrown a molotov at Melina, and Herman manages to shoot it somehow and then Melina gets set on fire I guess. Melina's like "AAAaAAAAaaaAaAAAAaaAAaAAaAAaHhHhHHHhHHhHHh!" and then she thinks my favourite thought:
m'lena[/quote wrote: Was this how Paul Smith felt?

And then she throws an axe at herman and herman is killed to death.

Well ok then. >_>

???????????????? wow
Conclusion: ~~~~~ Sadly kermit looked at herman. he was so sad... such a sad herman... like him... he only waned a normal life... was that too much to ask? was it?

(Herman was ok, I guess. He did definitely have some problems, but I feel like if he hadn't gone inactive he could've done something neat maybe.)

Give me another, you ineffective time police lady.
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Ruggahissy
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#6

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Cactus]

What little I know of Carson Baye comes from second-hand jokes and references, so if I knew about him while V3 was going on, I've purged it from my memory, like so much from that era. Into the abyss we go.

[+] Carson Baye
Profile:

So Carson Baye's big profile hook is that apparently had a "rich uncle" who's a real person in a real band that I've legitimately never heard of. "Sascha Konietzko", whomever that is. According to the profile, his uncle had an association with the Columbine shootings, which I remember and have read a lot about and honestly can't remember hearing about this "KMFDM" band being associated with it at all, so... obscure reference I guess?

I looked it up and apparently some of their lyrics were on one of the shooter's websites. Anyway, I don't know if I buy that the association with a rich band guy would really make him into a social outcast, but this is V3 and we don't need a whole lot of profile clarity. Also worth noting is that he beat up the football coach's son, punching him in the face and "stomping on his testicles". Great. I can see how this is going to go. He feels a lot like a pre-made player for me.

Game:

Carson starts in a similar fashion to most of the v3-era characters who didn't start on day one: with a mention of how he's been wandering for days. I'm glad we don't do this anymore. It's a lot more effective to follow people from the get-go. We see he still has his DS with him, which I guess is nice. Electronics hadn't been confiscated yet. Oh, v3. Carson seems fully unfazed by the fact he's been put in a death game, and spends a post musing about why the collars aren't heavier. He then ends his first post with:
wrote:
((Yes, I know it's a bit of a dick move for Carson to interrupt your post order, but this is completely in-character and normal for him. It would be uncharacteristic of him to wait..))
I am not enjoying myself.

Amanda Redder reacts negatively to Carson's intrusion, and both Lulu and Anna also brace for a confrontation. I'm tickled seeing Muninn in this thread as so many of these handlers aren't around anymore, but Candace was in V7 and holy shit, that's a ten year run on the site. Nice work Muninn. Lauren's also putting on a veneer of normalcy but is also a little rattled by Carson's entrance. I should also point out that his greeting: "hi bitches" probably wasn't the smartest.

Carson reacts in a rather laissez-faire manner to having a grenade launcher pointed at him, and I admire his fortitude; I'd be shitting my pants in fear. Carson, however, seems annoyed by the whole situation and points out to the ladies who are freaked out about the blood on his jacket that it's from animals as he's been hunting game to survive. With what, I'm curious to know, but I don't ask these questions, because I won't like the answers when I find them.

Lulu seems to open up to Carson (yay, Lulu - I always enjoyed her stuff in v3), but Amanda is still skeptical and leaves an open threat in the air. Carson shows off his corkscrew and talks some more about killing small animals for food. Lulu is turned off by this, as she's an animal lover with a soft heart. I like this, knowing where her journey goes. The group welcomes Carson, and as they decide a watch schedule, he starts classifying them all into anime tropes?

My brain starts going to mush. I don't understand a single word of what he's saying, which is just as well as he then takes out his DS and starts playing, still very unconcerned that he's in SOTF and very likely going to die. After playing with his DS for a bit, he notices Anna is still awake and goes to speak with her, telling her he's bored and just resigned to his fate, more or less.

I am not enjoying myself.

Everyone starts talking about how their lives are boring and so they're excited about SOTF, and even I'm like "what the fuck?", because I don't care how mundane your life is, I cannot fathom how being placed in a death game would even be remotely exciting. For shame, all of you. Everyone except Lauren is kind of thinking "oh, well, this is a bummer but it happens". Lauren tries to be positive but fails and starts crying, trying to compose herself but only succeeding a bit.

Muninn goes away for the weekend so Carson doesn't get posted with, but RaggedDruid does make an unnecessary OOC comment which Megami slaps him down for.

I am not enjoying myself.


Once the conversation resumes, Carson starts to try and flirt with Lauren, which leaves me sitting here at my desk shaking my head in disgust looking at my monitor. Other people at my work are probably wondering why I look so sour. It's because this is such a bizarre about-face. These people don't seem to care that they're in SOTF, it's like they're on a weird camping trip. After Lauren shoots him down by playing the "boyfriend" card, Carson name-drops his weird rich uncle. Lauren doesn't get a chance to reply as Anna and Lulu decide to move on.

Liam Black shows up in the thread, putting on a veneer to try and pretend he's not having homicidal urges, and Carson seems to be the only one who notices him, and he calls them out on it (ugh), introducing himself to Liam. As it turns out, Liam's about as fucking weird as Carson, and sits down as he gets grilled by Anna about his story of getting attacked and his friend getting killed. There's some... anime, (I think?) reference that both of them make that goes completely over my head, and then a few posts later they leave the area. Man, am I glad V7 is gonna have post orders, because this is just a clusterfuck.

I am not enjoying myself.

Carson and co show up to the hollow tree, and he gets all mad at Liam for calling out to the people with guns. He doesn't want to get blood on his nice new shirt that he's been wearing for three days, apparently. I don't know if Druid knows how clothes work. That shirt probably stinks and is sweaty by now.

Post order again rears its ugly head (or the lack thereof) and Carson isn't heard from for a while, and only reappears to... pull out his DS and play more Contra 4. This kid has 300+ games on his DS apparently, and he's going at Contra 4 like a madman. I don't get it. Anyhow, the other handlers are having discussions which do not remotely involve Carson so I'm skipping through them. He's just playing his DS. Shame, because Lenny Priestly and his sister are here, and with Lulu as well, two of the final four happen to be here.

As I scroll through the posts, I see Liam's handler making random video game references and OOC quoting TVTropes and I am blaming myself for some reason for all of V3's problems, even though my name nor any of my characters have come up at all. As I keep scrolling through looking for Carson posts, Liam is continuing to talk as though he's a character out of Phoenix Wright, which is a game I have actually played, so I get the reference and hate it, even though I liked the games. Nonetheless, this is not Liam's write-up, it's Carson's, so we'll move on. Things seem to be getting tense in the tree. Where's Carson?

I am NOT enjoying myself.

In my search for Carson, Eris Marquis stumbles upon the group and decides she'll V1-murderbot this motherfucker, so she depresses her trigger four times at the back of Liam's knee. Will he get hit? HE WILL! And he falls to the ground but sort of goes "oh well, it's just a flesh wound" and I'm wondering if I'm still in v2 or not.

While I'm trying to figure out whether to blow my own collar or not, Carson shows up again and dismisses the idea the girls have to leave Liam behind. Obviously he's not been paying attention at all, because Liam's been acting fuckin' crazy, but he doesn't wanna leave "one of their own" behind. Yikes. Anna is having none of this, and calls Carson on his stupid idea. He agrees, and takes out his corkscrew to go deal with Eris. He joins Liam outside, and the two make a plan to surround her. Liam starts monologuing at Eris, and Carson goes to the other side of her. Things get resolved kind of out of nowhere, and with the lack of announcement, they figure that something's happened, and Carson leaves the scene.

I am NOT enjoying myself.

Carson meets back up with Lenny, Lulu, and Co, and is seemingly oblivious to the fact that there's a bit of a showdown going on with Bobby Jacks and some others. Carson tries to get everyone to come back to the tree, and they shoot him down HARD. Apparently holding back his "latent sociopathy", he talks down to them and leaves.

I'm trying to figure out where he returns, but he shows up with a cut post and then the first time I can find him is in the middle of a Liam Black/Kimmy Redmond fight scene where he's telling Mimi to fuck off and that she godmoded Liam and that she has no right to accuse him of being impolite.

Druid, as a ten-year receipt to defend my good ol' pal Meemers, the hell with you, sir.

Mimi seems to just ignore his aggressive OOC note and we're joined by Morgan Green, and the scene is instantly elevated twenty steps ahead of where it was by the fact that Jerred's in it now. Morgan jumps in and tries to defend Kimmy. Things seem like they're about to get interesting when the announcements come on and the area becomes a danger zone. Everyone takes the time to GTFO except for Carson, and here comes SOTF Help. Oh god, I think I know what's about to happen.

I AM NOT ENJOYING MYSELF.

Carson realizes that he needs to relieve himself, and starts to do so. As he's doing so, he pulls out his DS and starts to play. While the announcements come on and announce that he's in a danger zone, Carson is still pooping. He tries to finish, and he is unable. Trying to run, his collar explodes with his pants down and he dies, ass-up. Five bucks says Chad wrote that death. Fuck me.

That was as bad as the memes and the jokes have led me to believe. What did you do at work today, Adam? OH NOTHING, JUST READ THE EQUIVALENT OF MIND CENTIPEDES.

I can't even say I read a really shitty death, because then it's a joke.

All I can say is that I did not enjoy myself. Whatsoever. This character interacted with Lulu, Lenny, Morgan, Eris and some other pretty decent characters that make it late into the game, and delivers nothing except in-jokes and in my opinion brings down the scene quality.

Skip this character. Skip them at all costs. Don't even read for the meme-death. It isn't very good, and honestly this is just a waste of everyone's time. I know we're supposed to not be mean, but like... this just isn't good and is illustrative of the two-headed v3 effect.

Somehow, I'm blaming myself for this. I'm not sure how, but I just am.

I'll take another, and I am wholeheartedly regretting my decision to do so.
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Ruggahissy
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#7

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Jimmydalad]

CONTENT WARNING: NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART
[+] Heather
Thankfully, Heather is a short read with only one pregame thread and one island thread. In fact, she only has two posts for the entire game, with her island one being shared with Lance. But boy, it's going to be something to get through. One of the first things I notice about Heather is that her only hobby or interest is "Former Cheerleader" which doesn't even qualify for either since she doesn't do it anymore. This aspect of her life isn't even touched upon in her biography, so I don't really see the point of it being there other than filling the space. Apart from that, the most you get is that she's a Bad Girl from a Bad Upbringing who does Bad Things cause she's a rebel. Oh, and she's also pregnant. This is an extremely important part of her character for horrible reasons once we get onto the island. There's no mention about the disadvantages about carrying a child on the island, but instead lists people taking pity on her for being pregnant as an advantage. However, I've learned that V3 had looser restrictions for profiles, so I'm going to let it slide, especially since she has more than two paragraphs worth of content unlike my previous child, Jodene.

The thing I feel about Megami is that she isn't a bad writer. Her words flow well and it's an easier read than that of Jodene at the very least. Her use of metaphors helped illustrate how Heather sees herself as dirty, and the resentment she felt towards Lance, the baby, and the world in general is conveyed well through her narrative and justified in Heather's eyes. It's clear we're not meant to think that Heather is a good person in any way, however, as she's given no positive personality traits whatsoever. She hates the world, hates the baby for making her grow up, hates Lance for being what she perceives as selfish and wants to go back to doing Bad Things. There's no reason for us to care about her struggle when she has no redeemable qualities and I believe that's what Megami was going for considering what happens to her on the island.

At least she wakes up on Day 1 and doesn't magically appear halfway through the game. Though that probably was because Megami wanted to start the game off with a bang. For, you see, this is the infamous thread where Heather Tilmitt tries to give herself an abortion using a lamp. I wish I was kidding. I'm not going to go into much detail because no one wants to read that. Basically, Lance finds her while she's doing this, they fight about it and both sides looks like assholes and then Lance kills her by stabbing then cutting her open with the saw and taking the fetus with him.

As I said before, Megami isn't a bad writer. In fact, she's probably better than at least half of the V3 writers. My main problem is that it's clear that Heather, and Lance by association, were purely written for shock value and nothing else. Heather isn't a person. She's just a condensed ball of pregnant unpleasantness who exists to have this horrible thing happen to her and be controversial. For a scene like this to have a meaningful impact, we need to have a reason to care about what happens to Heather. We want to sympathise and feel bad for the horrifying ordeal that she's going through. Having her be a one-dimensional Bad Girl who doesn't want the baby so she can go back to her Bad Girl lifestyle cheapens the impact a scene like this could've had. This scene didn't do anything for Heather or Lance, as Lance immediately dies in his next post by being shot by Melina. The way they're casually discarded is an indicator that Megami didn't write them to have a compelling narrative with either.

In a way, it also goes against what SOTF is about. SOTF shouldn't be about pure gore. Yes, horrible things happen to the kids on the island, but it's not the things that happen that make SOTF compelling or interesting. It's the exploration of different characters that make SOTF. How they cope with the rules of the game, how they interact with others in the new environment and what values they are willing to throw away in the name of survival. To demonstrate this, I'd like to compare this to the thread Surgeon Simulator 2017 in Second Chances 2. If you do want to check out that thread, I'm going to put a content warning because the things that Michael go through are very not safe for work or life. Surgeon Simulator 2017 works because we care about what happens to Michael and the horrible torture he goes through is bone-chilling because we can imagine someone like him existing in day to day life. The Cursed and the Damned fails to achieve this level because Heather is a caricature of the Bad Girl who drinks and goes to parties. There has been no work to explore her depth except in her hatred of her child and her entire personality is based around this entire scene. I feel like The Cursed and the Damned would have had a similar effect in any other board, while Surgeon Simulator 2017 is a uniquely SOTF thing.

I don't recommend reading Heather. She's not deep enough character-wise to be an interesting read and it's clear that she is a vehicle for the abortion scene and not much more. The scene isn't unpleasant in a compelling way. It's just unpleasant and controversial for the sake of being unpleasant and controversial, which shouldn't be how scenes like this are used in SOTF.

Personal Highlights:

In a way, Heather's upbringing was a sad one. She wasn't molested or mistreated. Her father didn't rape her. – It's nice to know what metrics we're working with here for tragic upbringings early on.

When the rain came, it washed away all the dirt and grime that had accumulated and cleaned all the filth away. When the rain came, things were fresh, new... pure again … It drenched her, soaked her to the core, but for some reason the cool water on her flesh made her feel better. – I like the imagery that Megami chooses here and how it reflects Heather's perception of herself

They'd done some pretty crazy things, they'd even mugged this elderly couple in an alleyway one time. Heather had gotten a really nice diamond necklace off the deal. – Your daily reminder that Heather is a Bad Girl who does Bad Things to people.
Hit me with another one.
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Ruggahissy
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#8

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Inge]

Alright, alright, alright! I got a Cyco character, if I remember correctly from the V2 Rat he had 5 hits out of 6 with his characters so I'm looking forward to this.

Alright, so Dennis. For the most part his profile is fine. He has a distinctive appearance and a interesting character concept, a nice kid with nerdy hobbies who grows up to identify with his Irish heritage and obsess over it to the point of stereotypicallness despite the fact that about a quarter of his blood is irish. His family being from mostly french and english backgrounds. Other than that, it doesn't go that much into his family situation.

The last paragraph deals with his SOTF fandom and how he rooted for Dodd and Calvert in their respective versions. It shows how differently SOTF was viewed back then, sort of in the same vein of TV on mini, but it doesn't really work since it's done by terrorists compared to TV so yeah. Also the last bit about Dennis apparently thinking he's having the luck of the irish. So there's that.

We're in agreement on that by the way. Kid should have gone to Vegas.

The last lines is solely Dodd shilling and is weirdly written. The whole thing is written in a casual tone throughout, but the last lines barely reads like something that should be in a profile and would probably be rewritten today to be more about Dennis.

It is quite short at about 4 paragraphs and a few lines beneath the last one and it barely goes into his advantages and disadvantages so that would need work. Also for some reason his conclusion isn't filled out. Somebody should get to that.

Anyways, Dennis only has one thread. Rinse, Repeat. It's one of those V3 thread that have like 5 pages, but most of it are like disconnected from each other since so many people go through them that you have to look for your character, which is really annoying. He starts on page 2 near the bottom and dies around the middle of page 3.

He's one of the really late comers into the game, it apparently being on day 7 at this point? If I'm reading the other posts right. Which is really weird considering Cyco doesn't really go into that as Dennis doesn't know what day it is and he doesn't elaborate on what he's been doing up to this point.

Of course, then he's immediately greeted with a hail satan by Lucy Arber who also only shows up in this thread and is a wannabe witch satanist person.

In case you haven't noticed, she's evil.

She also hates Dennis and apparently bullied him for years. She gets to work taunting him and they have a little back and forth here before it turns into a fight between them.

Short posts are exchanged where they wound each other with their weapons and tussle around for a bit before she kills him with her weapon. A Doliore? I looked it up and didn't get anything on what it is or any pictures, instead google keeps autocorrecting it to Dolipore which are specialised walls in between cells in fungi. Don't know why I felt the need to tell you that, maybe it was to educate you on fungi or to pad out this review since there isn't a whole lot to Dennis, his posts are short enough as is and since he's immediately thrust into a confrontation you don't really get a sense for the guy.

It is a nice fight between the two though and he is written well by Cyco and he follows stuff from the profile, he tries to stop the fight at times and is taken aback when he thinks he hurt Lucy at the start of it. So I guess I can recommend him. He's a short enough read.

Another one please.
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Ruggahissy
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#9

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Inge]

Chase is one of early era SOTF's 50/50 writers. In that the writing in of itself is fine, but the content can go from "This is intersting and I want to read more." to "Oh my god, why!!!!!!????" Her concepts are a bit all over the place in terms of execution and in V3's case, the one she has the least involvement in. Which sucks as that is the version with her arguably best ones.

Ok, so Melissa's profile has been redacted by her handler. Most likely because she was a self insert(her second SI, the first being Marie Zaid from V1) and putting her life story on a murder site that hits pretty high on the google searches might be a bad idea in retrospect. So Melissa only has her appearance and only one post in a oneshot called Those Who Can't.

Half her post consists of her journal, she's writing her personal feelings regarding SOTF, her relationships with other people and she's probably alienated from them. She also writes about witnessesing a few murders, not stated which, and that she was at first disgusted, but intrigued by the second and third. Her post ends with a journal piece that hints at Melissa turning playerish.

And then it leads into the fifth announcement where four inactives gets their collars blown because of SADD's antics. Shame.

The writing in Melissa's post is fine. The contents could have lead to interesting stuff with the journal, but instead it's never lead up on and she ends up one of the unfortunate few with nothing to her.

Can't recommend.

Another please.
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Ruggahissy
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#10

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Impereld]

Antonio's profile states his age as 18 ½. This would make sense if he was six, as when you're six that half a year is a sizeable fraction of your life. Less so at eighteen. I don't hate it, but I don't think it'd be allowed on a profile today, even if it is more specific.

His hobbies are Arnis, which his profile helpfully tells me is Filipino stickfighting, comics, ornithology and liqour. Oh, Antonio, you were doing so well up until that last point.

His description is pretty good despite all the comments in brackets, except for
a thin piano-wire bracelet around his left wrist, mainly for the fact that most people wouldn't see it as a weapon.
which given that this is V3 doesn't fill me with hope. I like the fact he's described as vaugely bruised all the time, because that is right, most people end up with little bruises and cuts in physical MMA-type training.
So, onto his biography. The very second sentence tells me he reads a lot, but beyond comics, reading isn't an interest. And then we learn he reads "commando" style books on explosives and guerrilla warfare. My premade player siren is going off in the background.

It talks about his family, it's mostly good except it mentions he has trust issues with other people, which I would have liked some more information on. I'm not asking for a dark backstory or anything, but more about how it affects his life.

Then it goes on about his philosophy and how it's at odds with his nature and you know what, I like conflicted characters, I really do. People aren't always rational, and the difficulty in choosing between something you feel is right and something you know is correct can make for compelling reading. But I'm a little worried this is one of those characters that wants to have its cake and eat it too.

And then there's a sidenote about his drinking and you know what, I get the whole "drinking as a cultural ritual" thing, but I might have put the interest as "drinking" instead of "liquor" to represent that.

And his advantages and disadvantages are mostly good. I'm not sure how much I believe the whole pacifist thing and I might've removed the explosives, as it doesn't seem to follow.

Game Start!

Oh wow, I forgot about the whole "characters coming in partway through the game." That's weird to me. I don't think I like it.

So he runs into the chapel to pray and then immediately starts swinging about a crucifix. Okay.

And naturally he won't allow killing in god's house while also getting ready to attack someone. Wow. I'm going to be nice and assume this cognitive dissonance is intentional.

And it's an inactive kill. Damn.

And Antonio goes berserk and beats Pascal to death, but Pascal pulls on his collar and Anthony goes boom, because neither the handler nor Help seem to know which is actually his name.

I would not recommend Anthony or Antonio.

Umm. Another, please?
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Ruggahissy
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#11

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Inge]

From what I have seen of Ciel\s V3 writing. It has a very informal tone to it all, specially the profiles. He doesn't have any hobbies or interests, instead listed as he's open to most things. Except surfing, he loves that.

We learn a bit about him and his family, his paretns were hippies in the 60's protesting the vietnam war and apparantly moved to Higland to live with relatives? It's not written concretely as it's an excuse Quale says? The whole profile is written like this and contains very little history about the guy. It's written more about his character and his personality. His standing is that he's popular and someone who's willing to pretend he likes someone when he doesn't. An all around nice guy who's popular with the student body.

His disadvanatges feels kinda contradictory? He's according to it a peacefull dove who doesn't believe in violence, but will play the game if he believes it's his destiny? What? And then it reaffirms that he will never play, even in self defense...Alright.

Quale's time on the island is weird. To put it simply. While Ciel follows the profile in how Quale acts and thinks and how he reaffirms to Braden Marsh that he's not going to play. It's a nice back and forth between the two. And then more people join the thread, it goes smoothly for a while and then suddendly there's a mmessage from Chase to not Godmod then he's suddenly taken over by Namira and he's out of the thread, convinced a nearby female student, Julia Lauper, is a vampire.

I think I know where this is going.

Quale ends up in the graveyard and convinced that Bobby Jacks is a zombie, shoots him. Bobby is protected by his bulletproof vest and gets up when Quale gets closer to look and the two get into a little fight that ends with Bobby shooting and beating Quale to death. The writing isn't bad during this, but it's written in one huge post and he has to share the spotlight with Bobby Jacks and well, it's mostly about Bobby.

I guess I can recommend Quale. Dude's a short read at two threads and spends the majority of his time in the first just having a peaceful conversation. But after an OOC message from a mod, he's taken over by Namira for his death scene. It's a nice death scene yeah, brutal as fuck as per V3. So you are given time to digest and care for his character.

Another one please.
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#12

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Cicada]
[+] Ninja Joe
Though actually I don't see why this character would have any sort of lasting reputation.

HERE I AM WITH MY NINJA CLAN

The premise is fairly dumb and circa-2000s teens era random and quirky-edge. Could read as an affectionate parody of that type, and there was potential for Joe to go that way, even in modern day SOTF with some more through characterization. Heatwizard, unfortunately, didn't quite reach that potential. Joe has two threads. In the first thread he actually has some solid presence. It's a bit vapid and lacking in depth (V6 Jerry Fury, for example, is an example of a walking joke with substance and consistency to boot). But Joe does at least have a consistent and coherent character concept, and in his first thread Joe has a decent internal monologue, some good action scene with solid narrative choices neatly and efficiently using a Danya announcement as a framing device. Nothing especially great but minus the misplaced bombast in the profile Joe, ICly, would be pretty serviceable in modern day SOTF!

In the second thread things go predictably V3 and Joe goes inactive after a single post which actually also had some potential besides some pretty bad dialogue. Joe becomes a prop that others in the thread proceed to use better before Joe is unceremoniously killed off.

I dunno, to be honest. Joe's alright. A bit too dull to be actually funny as could have been intended, a bit too weak of prose to actually carry any sort of impact. His character has cohesion around a specific concept but that concept is not explored in depth. Awkwardly he comes off better as a background piece than he does as his own character, others make better use of Joe's conceptual nature than he himself does. Nothing bad, but just bland. No recommendation, but no condemning either.
Won't be asking for another.
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#13

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Inge]

Elizabeth is written by Rhys, who brought us the wonderful Liam Black so I would look forward to this wonderful tale of insanity and bombasticness if it weren't for the fact that in the original Read-A-Thon I had Elizabeth, so I remember most of her journey. Since it was one thread. And a kill by Megami that the mod admitted wasn't that good. So.

Yeah.

But first! Her profile!

Man, the varying ways these profiles are written is bothering me honestly. Hobbies and interests are wrritten in their own paragraph, and with Elizabeth it's mostly about hunting.

Her appearance is three paragraphs long and mostly about how boyish she looks or the fact her left arm doesn't work. Nothing on her clothing so I'm assuming she's a nudist.

Elizabeth is a tomboy who's parents wanted a child of their same gender. When her mother won out, her father just treated her like a son anyways. It goes into this for a bit and how she bonds with her father before...

The accident

Her father's attacked and killed by a mountain lion, who proceeds to nearly eat Elizabeth's arm off. After that a paragraph about her regaining her wil to go hunting and wer're off to the advantages/disadvantages.

Knows how to use guns. Well versed in hiking and can tell the difference between poisonous plants.

Can't use left arm and problems climbing. She apparantly doesn't like running which is weird for someone who regularly goes hunting, but alright.

As I wrote earlier, Elizabeth only has one thread in the hospital. THERE'S ONLY SO MUCH...

Half this thread isn't even her as people keep coming in and out. There's a cameo appearance by Lenny and Elisabeth at one point, but they quickly leave. Sharon and Warren debut in this thread. Sharon leaves quickly as well after a conversation with Warren.

So to recap. She wakes up at the hospital, has a short conversation with Warren Pace which quickly gets awkward as Warren bails on the thread as Elizabeth's not responding. Afra Jacinth debuts and leaves in the same post as the hospital is turned into a danger zone and Elizabeth's quickly killed.

The writing is technically fine and compared to Liam Black, Elizabeth is downright believable as person and I like the writing behind her. But there isn't a lot to her, very few posts and she's killed very quickly in a short post as well.

Can't recommend.

Another please.
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#14

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original Critique by Blastinus]

You know, despite Neil Sinclair having such a huge impact on V3, I've never actually followed his story. His SADD team cast a huge shadow on the game, and yet I haven't gone in-depth on the team, That changes today!

Let us begin.
[+] Neil Sinclair


Nothing really notable about his backstory, and that's good. No forced angst, no pointless tragedy. The worst that happens is that he falls in with a bad crowd and gets a drug addiction. His backstory is straightforward and believable. Let's move on.

Neil doesn't have any pregame threads so his game starts on the island. Well, rather, it fails to start because he's just sitting calmly and not making any game plans in the slightest. Not that he could play if he wanted to, since his weapon is a pair of bunny ears, though that pales in comparison to the two saps who join him, since Ric Chee's got a pile of leaves and Evan Angler has a tickle-me-elmo doll.

Bit of a far cry from V1 giving guns to half the island, isn't it?

Neil's accommodating to the two men, and in a flash, he's starting to plan out an alliance for escaping the island. But first...SONG BREAK!
Daaannnnyaaaa! You stupid little cow!"

Cow? What the heck? Ah I was never good at free style

Neil started to strum hard, playing some heavy chords, the distortion and sound high, he felt like he was back playing with his band.

"Dannyyaa! We're coming for youuuu!"
Oh yeah, the terrorists let him keep his guitar, apparently. Kind of solves that joke weapon thing, doesn't it? But this is just a ruse, of course. As they belt out a rousing anthem of anti-Danya-ism, they pass around what's supposed to be song lyrics but they're actually sharing hidden notes. Neil's plan, you see, is to smash the cameras in order to disrupt Danya's ability to broadcast the show and track the kids. The Three Musketeers, as he calls his alliance, also hatch a scheme to interrupt the collars. Busy beavers, all told, and this is only the first thread.

Next thread, we discover the origin of Neil's group name. He's met with Nigel Gillespie who's planning an escape of his own, and they decide to pool their efforts, Neil suggesting via secret letter that they adopt the name SADD, based on a club at their school called Students Against Destructive Decisions. Having never known what it stood for, this comes as quite the revelation for me. I figured that one of the D's was Danya, like "Stupid Asshole Danya, Die!" or something like that. I confess that I am a bit disappointed with how straightforward and perfectly fine it is.

Unrelated, but Evan's handler RePeate has regular flashbacks to before the island and those use a bright yellow font. Not the worst if you're using a darker color scheme, but since I use the stark white one...Honestly, I've been told that indicates a lack of taste, so maybe the problem's on my end.

Okay, tangent over. Our group's destination for planning their next move is the cottage. This is going to be a horrendously terrible decision on Neil's part, but how was he to know that Ric Chee had an evil split personality in his head, or that Evan would spontaneously snort up a rock of cocaine, or that Nigel would just split without even a word? No amount of planning or resource gathering would have prepared him for the (to put it charitably) unqualified recruits who comprised his starting lineup. In a quick series of posts, every member just suddenly deserts, leaving Neil alone and confused. Rather than being discouraged, he instead becomes angry:
"SSSSAAAAAAADDDDDDD!"
No, angry. He wrecks all the cameras and swears that he'll make the SADD thing work, which I appreciate. A lot of handlers, when they see that their character gimmick isn't working, would become discouraged and just try something else, but no, Neil's sticking it out to the bitter end.

Therefore, when he shows up in the jungle, he's gone right back to the note passing, encountering a group of kids who are just recovering from the after-effects of an inactive kill. But before he can really get started with the recruiting, a random character walks into the scene, throws a grenade, and leaves in the same post. And I'm just like...really? Seriously, this is what we're doing now?

I'd like to do a little bit of a segue about the gamification of V3. It seems like in V1, the emphasis, with exceptions obviously, was about story writing and crafting a fun narrative. You had characters wanting to win the game, but it was natural then and jived often with the characters who wanted to do it. Here, with exceptions once again, the people who seem to want to win the game are the handlers themselves, so you have antics like, in this case, people treating scene transitions as if they were magical portals to a pocket dimension. So long as you had your character retreat to "elsewhere", they were effectively untouchable, no matter how much sense it made. This kind of rule abuse was common in V3 and really impacted the version's quality.

Fortunately for Neil, Matthew Wittany shields him from the grenade and everyone else scrambles to safety, so it's business as usual while Blood Boy kills someone a short distance away in a manner I don't care to describe. At the end of it, Neil's got two new recruits, and SADD is operational again...at least until the next thread because the guy who isn't Matthew goes missing. Following a plan to chase after the girl who threw a grenade at them, Neil and Matthew come into the middle of a tense standoff, and he tries his usual routine: not playing, forming an alliance, etc. Trouble is, everyone's too distrusting and tense. The people he hands his notebook to don't even read it, and instead he's just told to leave.

V3 has this real problem with groups, which I guess ties into the atmosphere of people wanting to pad their killcount. There's likely paranoia not just with the characters but the handlers themselves that putting their characters into a group will make them targeted by the opportunists and spree killers dotting the island.

So anyway, no luck there, but Neil doesn't give up, and next thread, he finds an interesting development: a group of people trying to disable the collars. But before it can get off the ground, the ringleader of the operation, Khrysta Lawrence, is tricked into lowering her guard and stabbed to death right in front of Neil. As the traitor runs off into the trees, he appeals to the leaderless Corbin Alren and Mary McKay, saying that he has a way to get off the island, but they just need to gather people and supplies, and much to his astonishment, they're actually onboard. I guess it helps that Corbin is also played by him. And most importantly, he has a gun, so SADD has some proper defense.

Unfortunately, Neil's still losing peeps, since Mary McKay's gone AWOL between threads, which puts him in a tight spot with Trish McCarroll, since he says that his group has a pregnant girl and there's clearly no pregnant girl, making her suspect him of being a liar. However, his plea doesn't fall on deaf ears, since he picks up another crewmate in Dominica Shapiro. For the record, with everyone who keeps dropping off, that puts the SADD army at a monstrous size of four. Crazy, I know.

A View to a Kill is where a number of important things happen for Neil and SADD as a whole. First, they start passing notes around about a potential plan to lure the terrorists to the island. If there's a technical failure, enough for the collars to temporarily get disrupted, they'll need to get folks out to fix the problem, and that'll be their chance to hijack their transportation. A daring plan, but ultimately it won't go down quite the way they expect. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I should also mention that as the group's been going along, they've been destroying every camera they see, apparently without any retaliation from Danya. Well, he was just biding his time, as the announcement hits and Danya states that due to Neil breaking so many cameras, he's going to punish him for it by...killing other contestants? I dunno, Danya, if Neil was more opportunistic and scheming, that would have been quite the reward, actually. It seems like the sort of thing that only has any sting because Neil's trying to be a big hero, and Danya wouldn't know that unless he also knew about the note passing. A very peculiar decision.

But before Neil can process that, who should come into the scene but Nathaniel "Blood Boy" Harris, just as it's announced that this part of the island has been declared a danger zone. So with a ticking clock and a psychotic murderer to deal with, SADD pulls together their one and only player kill in the game, and it's actually quite the doozy. Matthew gets taken hostage and Neil's ready to give himself up, but the rest of the group starts to open fire, and Blood Boy retaliates in return. He's finally taken down by a combination of bullets from three separate sources, and it's the kind of overkill that I can get behind. I don't like Blood Boy, but he does, in fact, go out in a very spectacular fashion.

Unfortunately, Corbin got hit by a poisoned blade, so he has Neil play him American Pie as the group exits the zone. Yes, it's the same kind of ego-stroking handler talking to himself that I complained about with Dodd. Does that stop it from being a well-written death scene? Honestly, I don't know. I just figure that it's a bit less organic when it's just a handler's characters, is all.

Nonetheless, this hits Neil really hard, and by the next thread, he's charging ahead of everyone else, hoping to just fall into an ambush in place of his friends. Well, not to be critical of someone in grief, but if you were going to be the bait, why'd you take the assault rifle? But fortunately, the group they encounter is friendly and just taking a breather, so this is, by and large, a thread for everyone to just relax and regroup...for all of one page. Then Bobby Jacks shows up, and everything's tense all over again.

Neil's naturally had enough of it, so he just yells at the group to quiet down and stop pointing weapons at one another...while pointing his M16 at them. Way to lead by example. Also, more and more people are piling into the thread and moving around all over everywhere, meaning that it's getting incresingly difficult to tell where any one person is in relation to another. Finally, someone decides to take a cheap shot at Bobby Jacks in order to break this up, but thanks to Jacks having a bulletproof vest, he's not the worse for wear and he actually defuses the situation, allowing SADD to pack up and leave. Neil does a general casting call and asks for everyone on SADD to move off to the side.

But then a random kid wakes up and shambles over in Bobby's general direction, and as far as Bobby's concerned, that's an excuse to reignite hostilities. Neato. It seems that Bobby was chosen to cull the herd, or several people asked him to kill them all at once. Either way, he stands out in the open acting invincible while SADD mostly stands there and watches him waste hapless kid after hapless kid, then he escapes. And you know, people are probably bummed about that, so it's time for a group chant.
Neil Sinclair raised both of his hands in the air, holding his M16 up high.

"SADD! SADD! SADD! SADD!"
Yes Neil, they are, and you're not helping. In fact, Dennis McDonald gets so annoyed that he shouts in Neil's face. Because really, on top of all the gunfire, you're shouting at the top of your lungs? It's like you're asking someone to do a repeat of the hand grenade thing. Neil responds that he did everything he could for the kids, which he didn't, and Dennis just departs in disgust while the rest of the group actually drifts towards Neil, surprisingly.

Next thread, Neil's weary of the game and tired again. Apparently he and two other members of SADD earned the BKA for Blood Boy, which he's none too happy about. But it's new people, and so it's recruiting time again. I think I've run out of ways to say that Neil wants everyone to be SADD like him. But fortunately, I don't have to, because Neil runs off after Matt and Dominica, since they went to claim the BKA prize and haven't been back yet. And wouldn't you know it, it's suddenly escape time. Since the escape threads were cut off from the rest of the forum, Neil's seemingly last act on the island is abandoning most of his crew in a church to go chasing after two members. Not a great way to go.

But behind the veil of secrecy, Neil is wandering around lost. This is #3 in the secret escape sequence. He encounters Rio Koizumi and she actually calls him out on how his camera smashing got people killed. Not that Neil ever expresses any remorse for that, but I suppose it wasn't actually his fault. The upshot is that he inducts the people there into the amorphous SADD blob and runs off ahead to thread #6, where he discovers the kids getting their collars off and eagerly steps forward for the same. This, however, makes him regret abandoning the people at the chapel, since it means that he couldn't save them. This is true, but in a metafictional sense, he wouldn't have been able to anyway.

Anyway, the announcement comes on, and surprisingly, Neil is dead, along with everyone else in the room. This is odd, since as far as Neil can tell, everyone is very much alive. That's when he gets an idea, something that will totally depart from everything he's done up ti-HAHAHAHAHAHA! No, he stands up on a table and makes a speech. It's great to know that even when he just randomly stumbles onto a location and is in no way responsible for the group geting their collars off OR the cameras being disabled, he still decides to take charge.

Needless to say, this doesn't take, and Neil suddenly gets discouraged all of a sudden, only getting his spirits reinvigorated by Matt and Dominica, his sterling comrades. It's like he decided to give up because he knew that Adam Dodd would barge in and do the exact same thing, and for the first time, he actually agrees to subordinate himself to someone else, just in time for the terrorists to arrive. Pledging to fight at Adam's side, Neil unloads at the attackers and they make a break for it, managing to get to the escape finale. The group have a final confrontation on the beach, and Neil is knocked over and about to be beaten when he catches a second wind and becomes angry again.
SADDDDDDD!!!!!!"
Yeah, never mind.

Two weeks later, the group having escaped somehow, Neil is operating with a pseudonym in Australia, only to be beaten up by a random crowd of hooligans. Apparently his time on the island has turned him back to his drug-abusing ways and he's torn up with guilt over losing several SADD members on the island. Fortunately, he gets contacted by STAR, and they help him clean up his act and go through extreme training to become a secret anti-Danya agent. Which is great...until you realize that STAR gets their asses handed to them in V5, so...happy end?
I can't say that I really liked Neil's portrayal. He seems like he means well, but he's so one-note and never provides a tangible goal for his team, so it's hard to say that he was really an effective leader. I would say that he's okay, not amazing, but not terrible either. When you consider the bottom of the barrel in V3, being average isn't the worst thing.

Can I do another?
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#15

Post by Ruggahissy »

[Original critique by Blastinus]

I have never heard of Marnie Yaguchi before, which surprises me, since I was actually in V3 for a short while. Once again, this should be illuminating.

What's notable about Marnie's profile is that there's nothing notable, and her handler Mimi notes the lack of notability. She had a perfectly ordinary and peaceful upbringing with no tragedy or traumatic incidents. She's a dancer and likes to be creative with her hair, and apparently her attitude is pretty steady and easygoing.

Even her intro post is pretty straightforward. She composes her thoughts, muses aloud, laments that her weapon is a cheese grater, chokes up a bit when talking about her mom and dad to the cameras, and then she does nothing for five straight days to explain her late start. She is, however, early enough to catch Ivan Roeghmills before he gets himself Bobby Jacked. She shares pleasantries with him and a guy named Jake before they decide to head off on their own path. Dante Cooper's watching from a distance but Mimi's respectful enough to not immediately call him out, preferring to have Marnie just note that she heard something.

Anyway, she goes to fill her water bottles at the lagoon, only to notice the corpse of Jodene in the water with a spear sticking out of her. I believe that she still refills her water bottles, which is kind of...I don't want to think about it. Horrified, but wanting an actual weapon, she forces herself to swallow her disgust and yank the spear out for her own ends. Her distaste is evident and natural. She might be an ordinary character, but ordinary in the context of V3 is miles above. That done, she leaves, but not before asking about Dorian Ibanescu. She doesn't explain why, but the two of them are in Escape together, so we'll know sooner or later.

Next thread, Dante Cooper springs an ambush, which means that the previous thread was actual foreshadowing. Surprising. Pleasantly so. He's desperate for supplies and so he's going to pilfer hers. Seems reasonable, and Marnie complies, likely because she knows what's in that water. As she shares what she has, she sweet talks him into forming an alliance, and it's interesting how it's presented. Both of them think they're playing the other while simultaneously working for their mutual interests.

Seeking shelter from the rain in the next thread, she runs into Kathy Holden and Becky Holt, friends of hers from school. Though the group distrusts Dante, they grudgingly share their thoughts on the game thus far, but unfortunately, they're interrupted by the siren call of Escape. Marnie will become part of the Escape group, meeting up with Neil when Rio confronts him about Danya's punishment. For her part, Marnie stands up for Neil, pointing out that it was Danya who murdered those girls, not Neil.

"And honestly, you're just scaring people for no reason. Neil isn't going to kill anyone.. he's a good guy who made a mistake."
Yeah, just a good guy who made one huge mistake, but she trusted him not to do it again.
This is the real clue about Marnie's character. She's got a slight cynical edge, but she's overall kind and willing to believe in people. Ultimately, she takes Neil up on his proposition and follows him to the thread where everyone gets their collars off, and she's fooled into believing Danya's announcement about the "dead" students who escaped, one among them being Dorian. Breaking down in despair, she flashes back to a time before the island, when Dorian was joking with her about how protective her parents were. As if on cue, he appears in the present, showing that the announcement of his death was extremely exaggerated. They embrace and share a tearful but happy moment, which is all too soon interrupted by the arrival of the terrorists.

Dorian and Marnie are some of the first students who make it to the rescue boat. Unwilling to leave without everyone else, she calls out anxiously for them to get down to the beach. As the shots ring out and she helps people onto the boat, she tries reassuring them that everything will be fine, that they're all going to make it, but she takes a bullet in the confusion and dies on the boat. Close to escape, and yet so far.

(Editor's note: I have been informed that while she did get shot, she didn't die from her wound. She's just waiting on an epilogue post as of the moment. My bad!)

It's really a shame that she doesn't make it have an epilogue, because I really liked Marnie's story arc. She has no ill-will for anyone, she's able to talk her way into alliances, she's understanding and patient, and overall she's just a very sweet girl. Even her last moments in the game were selfless and kind. I'd never heard of her before the read-a-thon, and now I wish that I had.

Another, please?
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