Survival Of The Fittest

And then a skeleton popped out,


Welcome to the Best Kill and Best Death Awards for October. 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:

Kai Rosado-Prince for killing Katelyn "Kitty" Graves
Matthew Bell for killing Letitia May
Aracelis Fuentes for killing Molly Oliveira

BEST DEATH AWARD:

AnimeNerd for the death of Jezzie Stark
VoltTurtle for the death of Katelyn "Kitty" Graves
Laurels for the death of Letitia May
ViolentMedic for the death of Molly Oliveira

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

Just over three days left for votes!

Less than two days left for votes!

votes!

bka: kai for killing kitty

I really struggled with deciding the vote for this because all the kill scenes were good IMO but felt it'd be more fun IC to reward someone for killing his best friend so

but also, I just think people being forced to put down their friends-turned-monsters are neat, and zee filled this role to the nines. i think the lead-up on his end was perfectly dragged out as he tries at every chance to give her a second chance, till they're all out of options and there's only one choice left to make. good stuff


bda: molly oliveira

always love some stomach-churning gore (shout out to aracelis for making good use of the nail bat) and also just, like, a really good emotional and physical conclusion to her story. someone without a prospect of anything good in her future, still dragging it out to the last. painfully well written

A little over one day left for votes!

BKA: Kai Rosado-Prince for killing Katelyn "Kitty" Graves. I think Kai’s side of this is very good. I like the particular mix of feeling he had to keep Kitty from killing others, but also guilt because she didn’t react like some monster, along with the preexisting guilt in the relationship.

BDA: ViolentMedic for the death of Molly Oliveira. This death is fucking sick in multiple senses of the word. It’s gross but well executed in what it is without feeling gratuitous. The details of what the nails do are what really sell it for me, in particular the nail going through a finger and cheek at the same time and the eye looking through broken and bleeding fingers.

BKA: Matthew Bell for the murder of Letitia May

BDA: AnimeNerd for the death of Jezzie Stark

Gonna make this quick because I know I wouldn't get this in otherwise, though know I really liked all the choices available this round.

Good job Shawn. Great fighting. For real though, I liked the way this scene played out and how it all escalated. Shawn and Matthew are a great duo and I liked seeing it here. Yeah this is the BKA explanation but shout out to the death here, Letitia, because that death post was really good too.

With 47 posts and Jezzie dying at 13, I also liked how in that thread, Jezzie is referred to as "that girl" by the others in there. Jezzie wanting to be something more and then dying abruptly and anti-climatically is a great end to the character. Shout out to the last line because damn, I liked it a lot.

Under 12 hours left for votes!

Best Kill Award: Aracelis killing Molly. It's a brutal, sudden kill, and there's so much emotion at play. Props to Medic and Deamon for making a gruesome nail bat death that's got a ton of tragedy behind it.

Best Death Award: AnimeNerd for Jezzie's death. "Maybe she wanted to make sure someone remembered her without hatred" is such a brutal line for a death game like SOTF, and I admire AN's playing with sympathy towards a killer and no sympathy. Great job!

BKA

Going with Kai for Kitty here. I have some issue with the construction and pacing of this scene in particular, but I do think Kai remains a steadfast and strong stand-in even during confusing circumstances, ambiguous emotions and in exploring relationships that don't have easy answers. This thread is him finally bubbling in answers on that test and I think he rises to the occasion within it. I haven't always related to Kai and I think in particular the Kitty dynamic is one that I struggle to breach sometimes, but in this scene and in this moment, he is impossible to deny. I think the emotionality of his end of the scene is very strong and I think in terms of the killers this time around he was the one that was the shiniest in the spotlight. Giving him his just desserts.

BDA

Medic for Molly. Kai took the edge for me over Aracelis due to the general skill and grounded despair backslash took to the scene, but overall I felt like this kill and death was the strongest of the month for me. It is in a very clean, concise and succinct thread that doesn't allow boredom to fester or trips itself up in repetition or retreading. It is straight to the point and brutal, black and white in both its morality and its results. Vengeance doesn't pay and it doesn't vindicate, but it does satisfy. This was a good meal. Medic carries the thread with the death post and Molly's general franticness and I think it is wise in this final moment to go all-in on the begging and even the sort of dark-comedy beat of her hitting the tree at the beginning. Good job all around!

My vote for Best Kill Award is for Aracelis Fuentes for killing Molly Oliveira. This was a real treat to read, a gripping sequel to the thread which saw Lucio accidentally get killed earlier on. I love it when a storyline relates back to what has happened in the past and it all feels connected up. The kill itself felt very real and whilst on the barbaric side did feel justified considering everything that happened before. Aracelis is a character you just have to root for, even though you probably shouldn't, and Molly's handler wrote their side of this kill fantastically too. All in all a brutal, grotesque demise for a character that captured my heart throughout for being sweet and innocent. Re-reading this just before voting was somehow even more sickening than the first time. There's just something about the word squelch in reference to being bludgeoned that is incredibly disorientating. Gruesome and bloody - great kill!

Lots of competition for Best Death Award and some really big hitters that are tough to pick between! Before I vote, a special shoutout to Dogs321 for the death of Alexander Hawthorne. Didn't make it in time for the awards but I was fully enticed by his death threads and how they went on. A really unique way to go... so close yet so far!

My vote is for VoltTurtle for the death of Kitty Graves. This one really was a tug at the heart strings. It doesn't matter how much you try to hate Kitty you can't quite get away with it. There's always something that despite the barbarity and sometimes borderline ridiculousness of all that she's done (the grenade launcher helping a lot with the latter) you walk away from a Kitty post wanting to forgive her. Or maybe that's just me and I'm about to expose myself for being weird. Either way, her death was a beautiful celebration of everything I've always loved about her character and it felt incredibly raw. There was no other way really for it to go other than with Kai and the whole dynamic between that group was really interesting to follow and I look forward to what comes next for those characters involved in the death or the aftermath of the death. VoltTurtle should be super proud of their work throughout V8 on Kitty, the death a fitting final tribute culminating a rollercoaster of story arcs.

Voting for Aracelis killing Molly for both BDA and BKA

Solid scene all-around. Real visceral and gnarly, and a nice pay-off to Molly's plot, including a very poignant callback to her first thread.

Right up against it time-wise so I’ll be brief

Both awards for both sides of Aracelis Fuentes killing Molly Oliviera. That scene was a wonderful little slice of brutally realistic, meaty violence. Truly stomach-tightening, with the perfect balance of detail to imagination to sell you a scene of two near-exhausted animals struggling to the death. Bellissimo.

BKA and BDA: Kai Rosado-Prince and Kitty Graves

VoltTurtle wrote: It was over. Her coin had come up tails. The end approached. This was all she would ever be.

backslash wrote:Kitty had never seemed confident that she had a future until right before Kai made the choice to take it from her.

This scene has everything. It's ambitious, it's the culmination of an arc that's been ongoing since the start of the game, and it made me big sad. Kudos also to AnimeNerd for giving up the spotlight on Jezzie's death for this scene; it's a fitting end for her and a very well-done death in its own right, but it's also a really selfless rp move and I think that's worth celebrating.

BKA: Kai Rosado-Prince for killing Katelyn "Kitty" Graves
Kai has been one of my favourite characters, and in my opinion one of the emotional heavy hitters of the version- he’s a truly decent guy torn between loyalty and the greater good. With this kill he ultimately chooses the latter, sacrificing his own love for Kitty in the name of duty (“It didn't feel heroic. Didn't feel right. Just necessary.”). But even when he kills Kitty, he refuses to ever let that necessary duty become unnecessary cruelty (“it was what Ashlyn or Matthew would have done”) and that’s a really beautiful warmth and decency that’s very welcome in such a cynical setting. Basically, this kill made me cry.


BDA: Laurels for the death of Letitia May
This death does a great job at capturing the loss of someone’s life being cut so short; the final post builds up all of Letitia’s dreams and ambitions and then tears them all away in a single gunshot. (“There were no more ideas for dresses and jewelry… No more knots in her hair.”) Reducing all that potential to a brief, impersonal epitaph at the end is a really poignant note to end on and made this another thread that had a strong emotional impact on me.