Survival Of The Fittest

Hello beautiful gems,


Welcome to the Best Kill and Best Death Awards for August. 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:
Evie McKown for killing Danielle Bird
Trinity Ashmore for killing Chester Folk (Attack, Death)
Julia Guerico for killing Victor Grail
Matthew Bell for killing Karin Han

BEST DEATH AWARD:
TheLordOfAwesome for the death of Danielle Bird
Ryuki for the death of Chester Folk
Gundham for the death of Karin Han
decoy73 for the death of Victor Grail
Jilly for the death of Shu Hawthorne
Grand Moff Hissa for the death of Crystal Henderson
Skraal for the death of Jacob Lang

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

BKA this month is a tough one, but I'll go for Trinity Ashmore for killing Chester Folk. I've really enjoyed Trinity's story so far and the subtleties in her interactions with other characters. Through Pippi's narrative building up to the kill post it felt like the thought of killing had been playing on her mind and yet the circumstances were somewhat accidental. Really well written and a totally believable reaction to a different spin on a home invasion. Loved the tension leading up to the inevitability of Chester's death and then the gruesome detail and repetition of a pretty drawn out murder was great to read too. Good thread!

Lots of competition for BDA but I think I will throw my vote to Gundham for the death of Karin Han. This is a really good death, and will likely be one of the most memorable deaths for me this version. Karin is a brilliant villain, a delusional caricature that you want to hate yet somehow can't quite bring yourself to doing it. Instead you feel bad for her, the fear of alien and being abducted, the paralysis caused by both a gut-wrenching injury to her leg, again written brilliantly with all the grisly details by all parties, and then her having to endure her biggest fear of being blinded by a bright light in her final moments. A painful end that is a strange combination of entertaining and comedic, yet dark and gruesome too. Love the use of the environment and how Shawn got to see his own handy work at play too. The multi-posts at the start of the thread with the script and Karin's worsening mental state following her last thread with Julia and the argument there was really well done. A great end for a top tier character.

Best Kill: Trinity Ashmore for killing Chester Folk. I am a sucker for the slow burn paranoia that inevitably ends with a horrible result, and Trinity's been slow cooking that all game. I really liked the way the explosion finally came for her here, where she's so wound up over expecting someone to betray or ambush her that she turns the most innocent thing into a potential attack and just flies off the handle, feeling that she's totally justified in a way that is believable in her shoes even while it's completely bonkers from the outside. I'm also curious whether she'd actually go collect her BKA prize, or if she'd convince herself that it's another trap, so I'd like to see how that plays out.

Best Death: TheLordOfAwesome for the death of Danielle Bird. Dani stands out as a very normal and reasonable person in the madness of the game, and I've appreciated how willing she is to point out and question when people are acting crazy all around her. The way that she faces death with as much dignity and defiance as possible is a really nice capstone for her arc, refusing to play along and make things easier for her killer. I wish she could have stuck around longer, but I'm glad that she was able to have a death where she really stayed in control emotionally and refused to play the part someone else assigned to her, making it feel like a kind of moral victory even though she was the one dying.

BKA: Trinity Ashmore for killing Chester Folk. The kill has a good build up of tension before Trinity starts swinging. I like the comparison of her footsteps to a sledgehammer shortly before she hits someone in the head with a hammer-ish weapon.

BDA: Skraal for the death of Jacob Lang. This guy is such a dick, but it’s communicated really well. His endless loop of antagonizing others so they get mad at him, giving him an excuse to run away and antagonize people again is made symbolically complete with him running onto the perilous ice and falling through as he baits Marshall again. Thematically it works well and it’s nice to see conflict over traits characters would have fully displayed even before the island.

Slightly over a day and a half left to vote

BKA: Trinity Ashmore for killing Chester Folk

Trinity has been teetering on a knifes edge for the entire game so its always been a case of when not if she was going to get a kill. The setup we get here from Pip is good as it really sells just how on edge Trinity is and her feeling that she's in a position were something bad is going to happen to her and soon, so she needs to strike first. Once her paranoid delusion is realised—or as close to realised as she needs—she snaps and does what she had been planning to do. The aftermath of her retrofitting any detail she can to justify her action is also a great detail that gives a lot of insight into her mental state.

BDA: TheLordOfAwesome for the death of Danielle Bird

Burn has been really on a roll with Dani throughout her multiple adventures on the island and now she gets to have a fun death that closes her time nicely. One thing I do like is how sudden and violent the actual death itself is. It works well for the scene as you'd feel that Dani would be a character where you'd expect some time after the wound is inflicted, but we don't get that. She's also defiant at the end, not allowing Evie to shy away from what she's doing and forcing her to confront how she's turning into the people she was supposed to be fighting against.

HM: The evil bisexual ghost Shu

bka - Trinity Ashmore for killing Chester. I thought pippin did well selling tension from her end and also did the best in regards to who I think the terrorists would reward a McDonald's large fry for.

bda - Danielle Bird. TLOA has done an absolutely wonderful job with Dani's scenes on the island as a straight man to a lot of shenanigans, and I really just enjoy reading her even up to her getting cornered by someone with a gun and trying her best to get out of an non-ideal situation.

BKA: Couldn't decide.


BDA: Jacob Lang.

This was a really tough one. I really enjoyed everyone in this scene and thought they did a good job. Jacob is someone I've liked as a character. I think he does a great job as describing this terrible depression and lack of will to go on while also keeping this trickster nature he's had all game that ultimately does him. Even in being so down, he is still a very entertaining and interesting character. The fact that at the end, he's using his own potential death to upset people as the last thing he has and as his las action is a great capstone.

Honorable mentions: I very nearly chose Shu for this, that was a terrific scene as well with menace and ambiguity, I thought Burn did a great job as Dani who stood her ground to the last, and a shout to Decoy's death for Victor.

BKA

I didn't think there was enough separation between everybody in either direction to pick one of these over the others and so I feel more comfortable abstaining from this section.

BDA

Jilly for Shu. This is a very tight scene with a pretty creative concept and two compelling characters and correspondingly very little fat. The strength of concept is bolstered by the concision of the prose and there is an eloquence and provocativeness that comes with the ambiguity that is cultivated by the word economy applied at different times by both backslash and Jilly. A very strong scene, interesting concept and an Inception style ending that had me reading back and trying to parse through and gain a light into Shu's intentions. What was aided in this scene was also Salem who has entered almost Batman villain tier in his convoluted and "fun" ways of murder...even when he's not murdering at all.

Honorable mentions go to TLOA for Dani Bird, this character stood out and flew high due in part because of how solid her footing was on the ground. There was something Gordon Ramseyian in TLOA's approach with Dani this version and she succeeded most and was the most innovative when she was just a normal bratty Hot Girl. Shout out to Skraal for the death of Jacob, this scene probably was my second choice for BDA and is another example of just a very tight, thematically strong work, the main separation between this and Shu's death for me is how much mileage I get out of the actual spectacle of the game...but the evocativeness of the last moments and the realness of the problems that provoke them in Jacob's death resonate strong. Good job!

BKA: I'm giving my vote to Trinity! I liked her reaction to coming across a body, there's a realistic weight here that a lot of other similar scenes lack. And the paranoia preceding her murder was foreshadowed nicely and made her break seem all the more believable. Also I just think giving BKAs to first time killers is neat [simpsons-potato.jpg]

BDA: I really really struggled between Jacob and Shu for this scene (also shout out to Dani!!!), but I think I'm gonna go with Jacob. It's really dark but also oddly funny? in a way that shouldn't mix but does, like French fries and vanilla ice cream. But I like this scene and this death as a summation of Jacob's character, life, his run on the island. It's a sad, funny little scene.

Best Kill: Evie McKown for killing Dani Bird

Simple and solid. As far as sudden BLAM deaths go this was a damn decent one, as well as the kill that stuck with me the most this month. Not sure what else to add here, it was my favourite kill out of the four nominees. Simple as that.


Best Death: Crystal Henderson

Whilst a part of me feels like this could've done with a trim here and there, I gotta hand it to Hissa for going all out on what was functionally a pretty straightforward death scene. Loved the flashback to the tarot reading, and the overall sense of disorientation as she slowly succumbs to her injuries. The 10k wordcount is pretty intimidating, but it's well worth the read.


Special shoutout as well to Shu and Salem's game of Russian Roulette, great little scene that.