The Oozers!
The Basics
Handler Name: MW
Your Trademark Character: The first day of the week...
Current Status of Trademark Character: Stepped on by goth boots!
Favorite Character: The wearer of the goth boots. Really Supers has a lot of exceptional characters (shout-out also to Melodie, Crispin, Cecilia, Austin, and more but I'm cutting it arbitrarily here), but Kermit almost always manages to imbue his characters with a sort of core observational humanity that I vibe with very hard. Astrid is a character who has a lot of quiet sadness and also tenacity about her, and I appreciate that her narrative trusts us to find that and also rewards us for digging deep and keeping track of things.
Favorite Scene: This thread just has so much fun, characterization, and joy (to read, not that the characters are experiencing) about it for what could otherwise be just a kind of normal wake-up post. I was invested from the word go, and the three principle players should feel very good about their work.
Favorite Death: I'm going to go with
Cyrus' death for this one, because it plays very specifically to one of my favorite things: characters who think they are far worse people than they actually are. Cyrus takes this basic concept and makes it especially fun by being a legitimately pretty bad person to begin with, but all the same he's not quite as broken as he thinks, and in a strange way that breaks him. The whole scene is a fascinating one from Jacob's side, and from Cyrus' it's this moment of genuine complexity for a character who on the surface seems to be simply straightforward terrible.
Favorite Quote: "Fuck off."
Favorite Post: I've picked a bunch of deaths for other stuff, so I will select
this one where somebody comes back to life. Salic did a great job with Claudia, and while I'd never want to impede somebody's artistic process, at the same time I am really, really happy that she made it—she's a great character, quite sympathetic, and just deserved it after all she went through and how much she suffered trying to be a friend.
Favorite Location: The Supers arena is very well-built/consistent, which makes it a bit hard to pick out individual areas (in a good way—it all feels like one big area) but I'll go with
The Recesses, mostly because they provide a bunch of unconventional obstacles and pieces of environmental storytelling.
Characters
Best Character Development: What character development has kept you intrigued? This one goes to
Cecilia, with a big ol' assist to
Mattie. Cecilia is fascinating in that she starts the game with her trust betrayed and with little to tie her to her class. She's cagy and willing to do what she has to in order to survive, but bit by bit she opens up and finds a connection to one other person, and from that changes her worldview in small ways, not big ones. It's a partnership I was invested in, one that ends tragically but satisfyingly, and
her final parting with Mattie has a lot of emotional power that has by this point been thoroughly earned. I think the early termination of the game especially did her favors, as it allows this unconventional path of growth to end in something other than total tragedy, which is rare and cool to see.
Best Game Impact: Which character do you feel has brought the most positive development to the game as a whole, outside their specific storyline?
Gary threw the first rock in the event which ultimately did a lot to define how about half the cast related to each other (and did a very good job being understated about that in his narrative, too).
In-game,
Austin was all over the place, and despite only physically interacting with a handful of people, he managed to kick off a seriously huge number of plots... albeit usually not in the way he intended to.
Best Innovation: Which character has been a breath of fresh air for you? I'm a sucker for going way in-depth on every little wrinkle and detail of some incredibly specific power, so I'm going to give this one to
August (with honorable mention to Lincoln, but he'll be coming up below so I just put what I dig about him there instead). August is fascinating because his power is something that fundamentally alters how he interfaces with a bunch of really common, everyday things, and Shiola did a great job of conveying this while also making it feel normal and natural to August's narrative—he dodges the trap of feeling like a character whose self-image is shaped by the reader's. August has senses normal people don't, massive destructive potential few understand, and yet at his core he's mostly just interested in trying ot have a quiet, peaceful life. There's one specific bit where
it's just quietly mentioned that August sees fractals and it's that sort of small touch that really puts him over the edge, even in a version where most people brought their A-games on creativity.
Best Realism: Which character is really grounded in reality in a way you find appealing? This time I'm going with
Sayuna, largely for some very impressive work on Cicada's end rendering
an authentic transcription of streamer monologues in a way that manages to convey what's happening while also providing a lot of characterization and avoiding coming across as hokey or forced. Sayuna also has this very real air of inconsistency to her, where she's not always sure of herself or her decisions and has moments of getting frustrated, or making snap bad decisions, which helps her feel like a real person.
Best (Super) Heroic Character: Which good guy has you solidly on their side? Gotta be
Stephen. Stephen is a good guy in the sort of way that often gets buried in games with more conclusive endings, but he has a lot of the best heroic traits in spades. He cares about others, he's patient and forgiving, and he honestly thinks through the repercussions and ramifications of his actions. He also has an amazing underdog story with some really nice little feel-good beats, and is one of the few characters to have an actually terrible power that turns around and pulls some major weight at the most vital moment. Would he have gotten out even without it? Sure, but that doesn't matter one bit narartively: Stephen beat the game on his own terms, and then he walked right back in to save a friend, and if that's not heroism I don't know what is.
Best (Super) Villainous Character: Who is your favorite ne'er-do-well? For pure, unapologetic villainy, I have to go with
Ray. Ray does a really nice job of starting out a sympathetic figure who's been screwed over by circumstance and luck and then sort of devolving from there into a monster... and I don't mean physically. The bitter and jealous aspects of his psychology are there from early on, but the pressures of the game and his own original inadvertent misdeed finally lead him to embrace what he's become, and when the turn is complete he goes full Resident Evil, shedding whatever restraint remained to functionally become the final boss battle of Supers... and I don't think we could ask for a better one.
Best Tragic Character: Whose sad and inevitable fate have you most enjoyed lamenting? There are a lot of characters in Supers who experience tragedy in the context of specific scenes, but I have to shout out a character for embodying tragedy on a full character level: and
Kyle. Kyle is one of many characters who have a gift that kinda sucks, but it's extra terrible for him because it's this constant reminder of what he dreams about, yearns for, and cannot have. This is extra cruel because Kyle is a legitimately good guy, who often finds himself caught in the crossfire of other people's choices and wrongdoings. And yet, for all that, Kyle time and again goes to bat for his friends, and at the end that loyalty and unwillingness to accept a situation as good enough or turn his back is what seals his fate.
Best Humorous Character: Which character made you laugh the most? (And we don't mean "unintentionally". Be nice!)
Moose is very funny and RC is a master of humor, so I am stating that for the record, but in an effort to diversify my picks on this question I also really have to shout out
Anatoly, who's written with such life and charm and personality that I think it's almost impossible not to fall in love with him. Aside from
an excellent Memory thread which is so iconic it supplied the name for these awards, Anatoly's given real attention when it comes to his little movements and thoughts, be it feigning a more casual interest in blood than he feels or popping off the ground like a Jack-in-the-box. But the really special thing about Anatoly is that he's also a very real, dark, introspective, and at times frightening character, and Poly uses the humor to very cannily create a picture of Anatoly that can then contrast with his more extreme or downbeat moments—it's comedy as a tool for tragedy.
Best Tactics: Through elimination of the competition or a solid plan for survival, who kept you interested in their struggle to make it back home? Who actually had a plan to survive this game? I'll tell you:
Alan, that's who. And guess what? He did! Alan played the game as close to perfectly as he could, finding people he could work with (and step behind when everything hit the fan), avoiding cultivating grudges, making use of his power as enticement and power-up, and always keeping an ear to the ground in case a better deal came along. One of the great things is that a lot of what Alan did can be read in a pretty negative light (and, you know, may even deserve to be) but because of his restraint and intelligence he comes out of it pretty clean instead, in-universe and even to the readers to some extent. He manages the most sneaky tactical play of all: doing it in a way where he can still look himself in the face in the mirror.
The Sympathy Award: Which character did you feel the most for, and most want good things for? This one was
Nora for me. Yes, Nora's kill count of "None" is, let us say, technical at best. She made some bad decisions and other people suffered for it, but I couldn't help really liking and rooting for her. She acted from a place of fear and frustration, and her life circumstances left her alone and isolated long before the game, and through it Kami portrayed her in a way that just made me feel for her a lot and want her to finally catch a break and find something better. And she did.
The Empathy Award: Which character could you most easily put yourself in the shoes of? Not really in any specific situation or relating to teh actions she took or whatever, but
Melodie's mindset is very familiar to me and just the way she works and ticks makes a lot of sense to me on an intuitive level. She's someone who's kind of constantly questioning everything but that includes herself, and I think is often more lost than she really wants to let on.
That's PCs only, of course. If we stretch to side characters I relate a whole lot to Craig.
The Gone-Too-Soon Award: Which deceased character should have stuck around a little longer? I'm specifically excluding anyone who kicked it during the last roll set because those make it too hard—several of my favs I would've loved to see make it out (Anatoly, Joel, Emily) got bopped right before and that's still very sad. But looking back a little further, I'm really bummed that
Kennedy didn't get to stick around a little longer, because Brackie did some really cool stuff both with her voice and with her game plan, and she occupied this interesting sort of soft-antagonistic niche that nobody else stepped in to fill. She did a lot of cool stuff while she was there, but could've done even more too!
The He-Had-It-Coming Award: Who best earned their (possibly still forthcoming) demise? Possibly unconventional one:
Kaine wasn't an irredeemably terrible person, but he was one who doubled down on his mistakes and frequently knee-jerk reacted to problems in profoundly non-constructive ways. From popping into a situation that wasn't really about him to
throw a hit to
refusing to walk away when outclassed Kaine set a path that was bound to end in blood, and indeed it did.
Guess it's true, you never can trust invisible people...
Scenes and Deaths
Best Tragedy: Which scene or death made you the most teary eyed? Original I split the tragic character question, but I decided to move one of them here:
Emily. Emily plays a very solid narrative as she struggles against her gift, doomed from the start by a single mistake but forced to suffer the fallout in slow motion. Skraal does an amazing job dangling hope and despair in alternating bursts, and I was really, really pulling for Emily to make it through but if she had to go out,
the way she did is the perfect tragic capstone. That said, a number of Emily's scenes could fit here, from
her memory one-shot to
her realization of what she's done. Even the quiet moments of normalcy are tragic for Emily, because of how frequently she's denied them.
The Stomach-Churner: Which scene or death has most effectively played with the gory/violent/overall disturbing side of the game?
Sydney's death is especially horrible, coming as it does both very early in the game and to a character who has done nothing to deserve it. While it's bad enough on a brutal physical level, the emotional beats make it so much worse, as too late Sydney realizes she's made a horrible mistake and dies wishing and trying to somehow undo it.
Best Impact: Which scene or death do you think best played a positive role in changing the course of the game? There's so much fun stuff that plays into the ultimate release of the final handful of students that I'm going to cop out and give this to
The Fourth Announcement because, hey, it sure shook stuff up and changed the course of the game!
Best Comedy: Which scene or death served as the best comic relief? Okay, I give up, a greased-up Moose
dropping his pants to slalom wildly through the halls trying and failing to catch and invisible person is absolutely hilarious and the whole scene is played in such a madcap way that I can't help but crack up. Also
this is one of the funniest meta-jokes the site has ever seen.
The Sunglasses-and-Explosions Award: Which scene or death had the best action going on? I'm giving this one to
Kaine vs. Crispin for being an action scene very different to Toxie's usual fare. As a fight, it's not as long or drawn-out as the post count might make you think—Crispin has the upper hand, and the second he finds the opening the fight ends. It's a distinct vibe that trades more in tension and surroundings, and that's really cool.
Best Feeling-Inducer: Which scene or death provoked the best emotional reaction from you?
Mattie's death hits especially hard because of the sheer amount of care and build-up put into it. He has a very unique situation in that his story has heavily revolved around one other character, and unlike so many accidental kills, this one is entirely believable and especially tragic in its ramifications. It also sets up
an incredible coda that I've mentioned above I think. Really powerful stuff all around.
Best Drama: Which scene or death had you on the edge of your seat in the way of conflict, suspense, and drama? One of the strengths of Supers is that it can occasionally turn into a different genre, and
David's death does a great job of showing this off. The scene is a pure horror movie chase, and on that level it's really effective, but it also manages to quietly be something more between the lines, the disappointing culmination of a one-sided relationship that exists primarily in negative space. Dramatic in every way, especially the cool ones, and great work from all involved.
Best Surprise: Which scene or death caught you most off guard in a pleasant way, either through its unpredictable nature or its unique execution?
Lincoln sheds his earthly form and embraces the sphere life. Lincoln is another character who goes super hard on his gift in ways that I appreciate greatly, and Jack did an amazing job setting up his totally unique perspective on the world (viewed at all times through an unblinking 360 degree eye) and then shaking that up when the fleshy part is dropped. I had no idea this was coming, and once it hit I had no idea where it was going, and the wild ride was a blast the whole time. Big kudos for a genuinely iconic moment possible only in Supers, and also to Supers staff for playing ball on this one.
Best Sandbox/Memories: Which out of game scene was your favorite? Too many good ones but if I limit it to just one I'm gonna shout out
The Mute for being such an intriguing and successful use of its form that it almost immediately inspired a new generation of threads in a similar vein. And yet, it stands tallest of all, at nineteen pages and six months in the making.
Gifts and Superpowers
Favorite Gift: Which power did you find most entertaining or intriguing? This one definitely goes to
Isabella, who takes a not-
too-out-there power and then runs fully into bonkersville with it. Isabella's gift as it's portrayed is simultaneously a coping mechanism coming from a relatable place of grief and also a strange, eldritch sort of inhuman monstrosity that may or may not have anyone home behind the scenes. It's really excellent creativity, and she shook the game with it.
Best Superhero Gift: Which power did you think was best used (or could have been best used) for good?
Lily gets one of the most inventive would-be heroic uses of her gift in
her final fight, and generally is one of the few characters rolling around on a power level where she can actually have a major impact. I also couldn't quite find a spot to put this elsewhere, but I wanted to shout out the very intriguing stuff done with her narratively, as her power took hold of some scenes and created an illusory landscape for others to traverse; in a way, she set the scene for little mini comic books for the ones who came near her, and I liked that a lot.
Best Supervillain Gift: Which power did you think would have been the most terrifying (or was) were it in the wrong hands? So this isn't anything that happens in the text at all, but I really love
Lucine's gift and while she uses it for good in-game, I can see so many fascinating ways to spin it for evil. She could easily be the brains behind a criminal syndicate, or a really potent spy!
The Power Pity Award: Which power most made you feel bad for the one "blessed" with it? There's a lot of sucky stuff out there, but to pick one that isn't a pure disability,
Noah has something that is really honed to mess him up personally, because it demands constant vigilance to keep from being a major threat to others. For something empathetic like he is, that means he has to constantly worry about accidents and live with the guilt of his past mistake.
The Awesome Curse Award: Which power that the user viewed as a "curse" did you most think was actually great? So okay, there are downsides for sure, but just think how much
Kincaid must pull in stream donations?
The "Gimme That!" Award: Which power would you want for yourself?
Joel's power is great (okay, aside from
that one time...), and I think the way it allows him to give people a little boost would be very useful. You could get a good street hustle going with that and a deck of cards! Really, what I think is best about this is that it's a support power that is mostly optional, but can come in clutch while being more or less undetectable. It doesn't ruin (or totally define) his life, and at the same time it can be incredibly potent.
Predictions, Preferences, and Positions
If you could change ANYTHING that has happened thus far, what would you change? Some of the deaths in the final stretch right before the save were brutal, and heck, since we're changing ANYTHING there are really quite a lot of members of the cast I would've liked to see get happy endings. Most of them, actually.
How much did you enjoy/not enjoy Supers V1? I had a whole bunch of fun with it, both as participant and as reader!
What do you like the most about Supers V1? I appreciated how most of the participants went hard on powers-as-metaphor (if not explicitly, then implicitly) and used their characters' abilities to make them more human rather than less (or at least to accentuate the core elements of their humanity). In the most out-there game, a lot of the stories told were some of the most down to earth, and that was really fun to see.
What do you think could have been better about the AU? I appreciate the experimentation with hard deadlines, but I think the messaging got confused at a few points and that led to some avoidable frustration. When something is harsher than the norm, I think it's really important to beat people over the head with it so that it's a little more real to them, and I also think that tying extensions to activity warnings was a misstep—the activity system is a necessary aspect of keeping the game moving, not a punishment, and in this case the cause (went 15 days without a post at some point earlier in the version) and effect (no extension on death) don't really line up clearly. I guess what I'm saying is, to me it'd make more sense to set the deadline to three weeks, give everyone the week regardless of warnings (or 28 days and no extensions for anyone, either/or), and then slam home in the thread every single day to-the-minute when the deadline is so there's no room to be surprised.
What do you think of the Supers metaplot? The Supers metaplot is IMO pretty cleanly and unambiguously the best of any version. Supers takes very strong advantage of its spot as an AU in the first IC iteration of the game to create a situation where the status quo does not have to stay unchanged, and this creates a much more reactive game experience. It also very cannily employs conservation of detail, introducing only characters who actually matter and have potential to influence the game and then giving us enough to understand them and care about them without drowning us with superfluous stuff. Not all of these lessons can be carried to every version, but I still think everyone would do well to look to it for inspiration in making metaplots that are there for something more than to just keep the wheels spinning.
How do you feel about Supers V1 compared to other AUs and versions? I think one of the most interesting differences in Supers is how clearly invested the players were in their characters, which I think speaks really well both to the base concept and the way players engaged with the powers-as-fundamental-reflections-of-humanity thing. This was mostly good! Where it was slightly less optimal was in that I think almost nobody was really ready to be rolled out—I'm pretty sure Supers has one of the lowest Hero play rates of all time (~7%, if you're curious!), and no adoptions at all. A universe people want to play in is something to be proud of, but it's always sad to see folks exit before they're ready.
How do you think Supers V2 will differ from/compare to Supers V1? I think we'll likely see some powers that are a little less horribly debilitating become the norm, for one. I also think we'll see handlers engage even more with the world around their characters, because some of the most vital stuff in Supers V1 played with that to great effect.
Talk About Yourself
What has been your favorite thing to write in Supers V1? It's a secret.
Kermit knows.
What are you proudest of in Supers V1? I did a few very specific things involving word choice that I won't go into detail with here (not a secret, just been banging away at this for ages, ask me later or whatever) and that nobody specifically called them out means they worked perfectly.
What do you wish you could improve? So basically I built myself an ending with the power I gave my character, but in doing so I also made a bet that I wouldn't be rolled first rolls. My intent was to play something long, slow, and kinda melodramatic and I had to reconfigure that in a hurry—had I known the odds would get me I'd've contrived a serious injury in Post 1 and gone from there.
What is your favorite Supers V1 memory? A whole bunch of stuff surrounding the rockfight, and Memories before the game proper opened in general. It was a pretty magical time and I think folks coming to it later can't quite get how it felt.
What else would you like to share? Anything goes!
Where did the other category go in the awards? I put it here instead. >:(
Sound Effect Of Doom: Jenelle's
pop is an extremely fun little onomatopoeia that slowly gains power as a sign that stuff's about to become miserable for everybody around.
Goodest Boy Award For Best Pet: Ana Ford's parasite is given a ton of personality through its little actions and descriptions, in a way that makes it very sympathetic and surprisingly cute for a blob of highly dangerous liquid metal. (Lincoln's orb doesn't count because it's a person, and Isabella's bugs are friends, not pets.)
Against Your Own Best Interests Award For Dying Due To A Good Deed: Selene Flores, who knew better than to let Anatoly start drinking her without a backup plan but did it anyways. Selene was a key part of the initial dream trio, and her death was sort of a point at which it became clear that things weren't gonna go well at all.
Well-Done Award For Excellence In Grilling: No-Mercy Mercy really did not need to go
quite so hard char-broiling friend and foe alike, but she did it anyways! With a sizzle and a pop, Mercy served up some of the lest appetizing descriptions of the version, and really hammered home what "too hot to handle" can mean.
Hit The Bricks: I mean, really, why not just leave? Go! Walk out,
Javi! It's not like anyone's doing anything important here or whatever.
Boyfriend Of The Year: Toma was a very good partner indeed from what we saw, and just sort of a lovable goofy (who, okay, could maybe rip your face off). He came to a tragic end due to his loyalty, and there area bunch of places I almost fit him in but didn't quite squeeze him so instead I'm sending him out with the last specific shout-out.
I Need To Catch Up Award: All of Aftermath, whoops! It's been a long few months. ;-;
Finally, as always this is semi-off-the-cuff and I might have different answers if asked tomorrow; there are loads of great scenes and characters I missed.
