V8 BKA/BDA Voting: March 2023

[Ruggahissy]

Hello, my delectable cupcakes and pancakes, and welcome to the Best Kill and Best Death Awards for March. Before we begin, the rules:

1. In this thread, you may post as an anonymous guest to select one student to receive the day's Best Kill Award, and one handler to receive the Best Death Award. Prizes will be given out in-character for BKA, consisting of a weapon and food, and out-of-character for BDA, consisting of a quote from their character to be displayed on the board index until the next BDA is awarded.
2. You may only vote while logged out. You can identify yourself in your vote if you want, but you may not claim to be another handler.
3. You may only vote once, and you may not vote for yourself in either category. Staff can see IP addresses, and we will check them if we have reason to suspect shenanigans.
4. You must provide reasoning with your vote for why you think your choices deserve the award. Votes with no reasoning will not be counted.
5. Don't be a jerk. You can explain why some scenes are your favorites without tearing others down.
6. Make sure that your answers are clear; please don't use any formatting that might cause votes to be miscounted or left out.
7. Please be sure to read every kill and death before voting, please vote for your genuine favorites rather than just voting for your friends, and please don't campaign for awards in the chat or otherwise try to influence the vote.

And your Best Kill and Best Death contestants:

BEST KILL AWARD:

Karin Han for killing Ashlee Donovan
Joshua James for killing Mariya White
Colm Forsyth for killing Angelo Lee
Lillian Larson for killing Janice Cresner
Jack Kilgore for killing Quentin Skinner
Katelyn Graves for killing Alex Avanesian

BEST DEATH AWARD:

KamiKaze for the death of Ashlee Donovan
Primrosette for the death of Dave Dearborn
AnimeNerd for the death of Mariya White
backslash for the death of Angelo Lee
Ohm for the death of Janice Cresner
DerArknight for the death of Quentin Skinner
Applesintime for the death of Alex Avanesian
Blizzardeyewonder for the death of Meena Lalita Kumar

Voting will run for five days. Votes will remain hidden until time is up, and the winners will be declared in the following announcement.

[mlem]

BDA vote is for Meena. It hurts, man. It hurts. The vivid, physical descriptions. The look into a fucked up mind. I loved it.

BKA vote is for Lillian killing Janice. It was so... messy? I guess? In a way that was brutally realistic. Chef's kiss. Mwah.

[ScourgeWithScorpions]

BKA: Colm Forsyth for killing Angelo Lee

Aw beans. I like this one and I think the short sentences employed really capture the panicky “hitting someone in the head with furniture” energy. The dialogue is also nice, like it’s goofy, but believable for a teenager to talk like a goofball even when things are serious.

BDA: Blizzardeyewonder for the death of Meena Lalita Kumar

It’s a slow burn of a death thread but it’s worth it. I really enjoy (in a painful way) the buildup of Meena feeling ignored by his friends to the extent they’d rather embrace a spree killer over him, but also mixes in that he’s still wrong about it, because he hurts himself to get back at them. Like I started out kind of agreeing with him, but then as it goes he’s very much pushing it too far and you want to put the brakes on it, but can’t in the situation the group is in.

But that’s just my take.

[Nobody Important]

BKA: Katelyn Graves

As hesitant as I am to vote for the same winner as last month, I gotta give it to Volt and Apples here for one of my favourite scenes this time around. Was itching to see someone attempt to ambush a BKA winner since Day 2, and who better to finally give it a shot (and fail spectacularly) than Alex. I'll admit to not being the biggest fan of Kitty's last kill, but this one definitely felt like a big highlight in terms of reestablishing why she's currently V8's top killer. Clean, efficient and a nice bit of character contrast. Solid scene all-around.

BDA: Meena/Akshya Lalita Kumar

I'll admit, there's a part of me that's also hesitant to vote for this one, since awarding it as the Best death feels... Wrong. Few death scenes in SOTF have made me feel as genuinely upset and emotionally distressed as this one, to the point where it pretty much ruined my mood for the rest of the evening and made me question whether or not this entire game is inherently fucked. As someone who finds themselves dealing with infrequent bouts of intense self-scrutiny, this scene (and the one-shot prior to it) hit a lot of nails a little too hard for comfort, to the point I'm concerned that it maybe goes a little too far at times. 

At the same time, any scene that manages to invoke such a strong reaction from a jaded bastard like myself deserves credit. I don't feel particularly happy about voting for it to be declared the best death, as if that's something to aspire to, but I can't deny that it managed to leave a big impact and voting for anything else feels disingenuous. 

[Guest]

Best Kill: Lily Larsen for killing Janice Cresner. This scene felt like a nice, classic instance of a generally good-natured character showing that they've got teeth too. I enjoyed Lily and Amaryllis coming to each other's rescue as the culmination of their encounters with Janice, and a sort of antithesis to her lone wolf approach. I also appreciated Lily stumbling over the handling of her own weapon, which added a nice touch of grounding to the scene, and her demonstration of how dangerous it is to her too made the improvised use of it to finish Janice at the end that much more brutal.

Best Death: BlizzardeyeWonder for the death of Meena Lalita Kumar. Blizzard has a really nice human touch with his characters that makes their emotions something I can feel and understand even when they are things I don'r personally relate to. Grief Seed and Witch Barrier from Meena's side made a particularly effective one-two punch of feeling that really got me, and I think the note at the end of Meena's death post does a great job of encapsulating what he was going through: a spiral that he couldn't pull out of and had to follow through to the bitter end.

[VoltTurtle]

A little under two days left for votes!

[the ice mummy]

BKA - it's a toss up between Karin and Colm for me but ultimately I think I'm giving it to Colm for the kill on Angelo. I always love a good kind of accidental kill done in alleged duress that also encorporates parts of the environment.

BDA - Giving it to Ohm for Janice. It's a lot of pressure to do an acceptable death when rolled let alone it happening when you literally just adopted the person who got rolled, so I feel like Ohm did a good job of putting the care and work in for a satisfying end for her along with continuing the legacy RC had previous established.

[RastafarianTargaryen]

Ultimately I am going to go with the singular scene I felt was the best executed and had the least problems from a characterization, blocking, pacing and conceptual standpoint.

And so that is Colm Forsyth for killing Angelo Lee and backslash for Angelo Lee. As I said before, this is a cleanly constructed scene with not much to miss in regard to motivation and reasoning. One small critique would be that I think Angelo would've benefitted more from a round or two of narrative hand-showing to better foreshadow his attack. That aside, this kill carries with it a light tone with some comedic bend but it ends with an eerie and strong image of Angelo pulling at his hair and dying from brain trauma. I think in reference to the other scenes, this one had the most bite and the most skill in actual execution and so I'm giving it both my votes!

[BROQ]

BKA: Joshua James for killing Mariya White
Josh is back and being the creepiest man alive. He turns up here and decides to make another weird power trip and this time Mariya gets to be his victim. I think this scene works as a disturbing example of this as he decides to kill Mariya purely because he thinks it will be a fun way to mess with Amy. The way he acts in this scene leading up to him telling Mariya he killed Amy out of pure spite to twist the knife really gets across how much of what Josh does is based around taking any opportunity to take and abuse power over people now that he has the chance.

BDA: Ohm for Janice Cresnar
I feel like Ohm did a good job of capturing Janice's voice and also did a good job with the death post as Janice fights against Lilly while lamenting her own fate and how this is all unfair because she's supposed to be a winner and was being an active player, which kind of fits with the vibes she was giving off following her last kills so I think it does a good job wrapping up her story.

[camM9q5rDDtGaXHBrW4g]

I have less than an hour to submit my BKA/BDA votes, so I'll try to be brief. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy these scenes as much, just that I've been feeling up and down lately and haven't had the time to unpack them as much. I hope nobody is disappointed by this turn of events—I'll do my best to write more concrete thoughts next time.

BEST KILL AWARD:

KILLER: S084: JACK KILGORE [CardboardAirplane], VICTIM: S116: QUENTIN B. SKINNER [DerArknight]

I enjoyed the murder mystery aspect of the thread and its aftermath—it kept me guessing, and I was excited to see the result. Everyone involved did a great job selling the mystery, and though I think it could've used some more time, I think it's creative and fun. I enjoyed it. I think it helps that my guess as to the thief was incorrect.

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BEST DEATH AWARD:

S066: HENRY DAVID DEARBORN [Primrosette]

I would've given this scene my BKA, provided it was eligible. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, it isn't, but the time and care that went into the scene resulted in good quality. I think Alex Avanesian was fun as a villain. Primrosette also did a great job with Dave, and I'm sad that he went out so quickly.

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[Captcha Lover]

BKA: Lillian Larson
BDA: Janice Cresner

Normally I separate these into their own little categories with write ups but I'm giving both to the same scene so lets get into it. This is my favorite of the scenes I wasn't involved with, taken as a whole. I like the set up and I feel it makes sense and is plotted well. Lily goes outside and I like that Janice sees her, thinks her miming of smoking is her being in possession of real cigarettes, and is partly motivated to kill her for that. The fight is mostly smooth and I like the incorporation of Lily's unusual weapon as well as the reprieve from Amaryllis, proving teamwork do make the dream work. I think it was well executed and well written from the Lily standpoint, so she gets my vote.

A little more on Janice. I liked her characterization and I want to give a special shout because Ohm had her for such a brief period. It's not fun to have that kind of bad luck, but I felt he really put in work to make a satisfying scene and also, put the effort in to match the particular thought patterns of Janice given she was a recent adoption. She was still Janice, which is hard to do in any adoption situation let alone one where you've had her for such a brief period of time.

Solid work across the board, good fight, logical progression, good character work from all involved.


HONORABLE MENTIONS TO: Karin Han, very good writing from Gundham in this scene, well done. Angelo, really awful last post. Gross, upsetting. Please get away from me. Alex specifically for his spite levels in being mad Kitty had not studied the blade like he had and hoping she choked on her meal.

[CHUGGACHUGGACHUGGACH]

Gonna be quick with this vote since not much time.

BKA: Lily killing Janice
- struggled between this and Colm/Angelo, but I like the desperation of the kill post itself and think it's just a cool neat little scene of friends defending each other.


BDA: Meena
It's a messy, sprawling, ambitious scene, and that's what puts it over the top for me. The way he screams and shrieks and bleeds into the end is something that will stay with me for a bit. Also want to shout out everyone else in that scene playing their roles to the hilt, perfectly contributing to the building of tension in that scene.

Honorable mention: colm/angelo, v good flash in the pan scene, ~20 posts of chaos. The last lonely, dying post from Angelo is heartbreaking. Good scene.

[Ruggahissy]

That's time.