With TV3 hurtling into Endgame, it is time once more for the Killer Toasters. This one is pretty similar to the Halfway Toasters, but with tweaks appropriate to the game stage.
As always, you can be as detailed or not as you like. It's fun to get reasoning behind each choice, but it's also fun to get a list of names, especially when the alternative is no list of names.
A quick reminder: the Toasters are by and large a place for positivity. There are a couple spots where we ask you to be more critical, but these usually center around the game as a whole, the TV plotline, or staff stuff. If you have issues with specific handlers or characters, this is not the spot to get into them—there are lots of other places where criticism of that sort is welcomed and encouraged.
As usual, the code for the Toasters may be found at the end of this post in a spoiler.
Killer Toasters:
The Basics
Handler Name:
Your Trademark Character:
Current Status of Trademark Character:
Favorite Character:
Favorite Weapon:
Favorite Scene:
Favorite Death:
Favorite Quote:
Favorite Post:
Favorite Location:
Characters
Best Character Development: What character development has kept you intrigued?
Best Game Impact: Which character do you feel has brought the most positive development to the game as a whole, outside their specific storyline?
Best Innovation: Which character has been a breath of fresh air for you?
Best Realism: Which character is really grounded in reality in a way you find appealing?
Best Heroic Character: Which good guy has you solidly on their side?
Best Villainous Character: Who is your favorite ne'er-do-well?
Best Tragic Character: Whose sad and inevitable fate have you most enjoyed lamenting?
Best Humorous Character: Which character made you laugh the most? (Intentional humor only, please. Be nice!)
Best Tactics: Through elimination of the competition or a solid plan for survival, who's kept you interested in their struggle to make it back home?
The Sympathy Award: Which character did you feel the most for, and most want good things for?
The Empathy Award: Which character could you most easily put yourself in the shoes of?
The Gone-Too-Soon Award: Which deceased character should have stuck around a little longer?
The He-Had-It-Coming Award: Who best earned their (possibly still forthcoming) demise?
The Destined-For-Great-Things Award: Who are you hoping to see make a big splash in the remainder of the game?
The Everything Else Award: If it doesn't fit anywhere above but you want to give it a shout-out, put it here.
Scenes and Deaths
Best Tragedy: Which scene or death made you the most teary eyed?
The Stomach-Churner Award: Which scene or death has most effectively played with the gory/violent/overall disturbing side of the game?
Best Impact: Which scene or death do you think best played a positive role in changing the course of the game?
Best Comedy: Which scene or death served as the best comic relief?
The Sunglasses-and-Explosions Award: Which scene or death had the best action going on?
Best Feeling-Inducer: Which scene or death provoked the best emotional reaction from you?
Best Drama: Which scene or death had you on the edge of your seat in the way of conflict, suspense, or drama?
Best Surprise: Which scene or death caught you most off guard in a pleasant way, either through its unpredictable nature or its unique execution?
Teams/Mentors/TV Universe
The Mason Ross Teamwork Award: Credit to NAFT for the name. Which is your favorite team this season?
The This-Kill-Is-Brought-To-You-By-Verizon Award: Who is your favorite mentor from this cast?
"You're My Favorite Jellyfish!" What is your favorite use or subversion of team/mentor mechanics or relationships this season?
Making The Dream Work: Which team are you rooting for to find success?
They're ALL Terrible People? Which team has thoroughly earned its inevitable downfall?
The Universe Next Door... If you could move one character to another team, who would it be and where would they go?
The Scarlet Panther Award For Cooperation Which team's dynamic and interactions with their assigned allies have you enjoyed the most?
Put Me In, Coach! Which team would you want to be on if you were in TV?
Best COTD Tangent: What's been your favorite piece of work from the in-character TV fan forum?
Best Social Media Drama: What TV-related social media musings have most positively caught your attention?
Predictions, Preferences, and Positions
If you could change ANYTHING that has happened thus far, what would you change?
There are six remaining characters. Which character/team are you counting on to be the last one standing in TV3?
How do you predict the ending of TV3 is going to turn out?
How much did you enjoy/not enjoy TV3?
What do you like the most about TV3?
What do you think could have been better about the version?
What do you think of the overall TV story/world?
What are your hopes for the future of TV, both the smaller games and the eventual TV4?
How do you feel about TV3 compared to TV1 and 2?
How do you feel about TV3 compared to other non-TV games?
Talk About Yourself
What has been your favorite thing to write in TV3?
Which of your TV3 characters was your favorite to write?
What are you proudest of in TV3?
What do you wish you could improve?
What is your favorite TV3 memory?
What else would you like to share? Anything goes!
TV3 Final Toasters
The time has come!
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MurderWeasel
- Posts: 3442
- Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2018 9:56 am
- Team Affiliation: Jewel's Leviathans
TV3 Final Toasters
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almostinhuman
- Posts: 646
- Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2020 7:06 pm
These are probably gonna be a little less in-depth than the last ones I did, but oh well.
Killer Toasters:
The Basics
Handler Name: almostinhuman
Your Trademark Character: Nadine Flores
Current Status of Trademark Character: I've heard she's recently been dead.
Favorite Character: Akeno still probably handily takes this. What can I say, I love a violent girl with a complex inner world and cool action scenes.
Favorite Weapon: The cheese wheel, cruelly abandoned on the clipper ship and never allowed to unlock its true potential.
Favorite Scene: TINNITUS! Watching this thread unfold in real time was excellently tense and it's a perfect way to bring the Final 10 together and start the whirlwind of crazy shit they got up to.
Favorite Death: Still gotta give this to Pippi's death. I love the preceding conversation between Pippi and Luanne and having the actual death happen between the two/three threads and being told from Anthony's extremely callous perspective. Good shit.
Favorite Quote: "-wanna trade my limited edition run Mandy for your uncommon Fisk?"
Favorite Post: Shoshanna's final post. Love Shoshanna, love a big dramatic speech, love capping off a story on a bittersweet note, emphasis on the bitter.
Favorite Location:The Cruise Ship Banquet Hall. Not only the center of a lot of great scenes but also fun because of how badly it degrades over time, especially once it gets blown the fuck up.
Characters
Best Character Development: Anthony, in a weird way. He starts in such a self-righteous but nominally-pacifistic place, so it was fun to watch that slowly degrade as he gets more and more prone to violent outbursts, barely propped up by that very self-righteous attitude he started with until it eventually comes unglued and leaves him as exactly what he hated.
Best Game Impact: It would be wrong to give this to anybody but Fisk and the Respects. The Respects get entangled in so many storylines, usually leaving a bloody mark on them, and in many ways their drama kind of defined TV3, even with threads and characters that had little-to-nothing to do with them directly.
Best Innovation: Mariko, I suppose? Her D&D stuff was fun.
Best Realism: Cory is intensely grounded and subdued in a version that's often highly theatrical, so in a way he stands out for that. Even his death is kinda subdued, though tragic.
Best Heroic Character: Kermit says if I misspell Luanne's name on purpose again he'll canonize Nadine x Anthony and I don't want that. Anyway she's neat, good on her for all that escape stuff and falling in love with Jewel Evans or whatever.
Best Villainous Character: TV3 has so many great bad guys but my fave is always gonna be Seo-yun. Watching her get slowly torn down as she pursues the ten-kill release, to the point where when she eventually succeeds she can't really enjoy it anymore, was a great thing to watch play out over the game.
Best Tragic Character: Bethan. Her downfall was one you could see coming a mile away but it didn't make it any less tragic.
Best Humorous Character: "I'm a tree."
Best Tactics: I mean, Luanne actually escaped, and (physically) unscathed to boot! Something of a win-by-default.
The Sympathy Award: Most of them, really, but gonna make an outside pick and just beg to let Emmy have like a good fucking moment, geez.
The Empathy Award: Elliot, James and Mandy for more or less the same reason; being someone unsuited to murder and having to survive off the back of someone else's bloody work (in James' case, multiple someones) isn't necessarily sympathetic, but it is super understandable.
The Gone-Too-Soon Award: Literally everyone is gonna say Giselle, but like, come on. GISELLE!
The He-Had-It-Coming Award: Fisk losing literally everything he cares about and dying in a painful and undignified way was, frankly, a long time coming.
The Destined-For-Great-Things Award: We've got such a great crop going into Endgame but I'm particularly excited to see what Verity does.
The Everything Else Award: Leah's gonna get this again bc I forgot to mention her again but seriously she's great go read her.
Scenes and Deaths
Best Tragedy: It Means Everything, not only sad on its own, but a tragedy of ultimately nine deaths (and possibly more depending on how Endgame goes).
The Stomach-Churner Award: Britnee's death still wins this but I've gotta say Fisk and Sofia sure are competitive.
Best Impact: A split between F's in the chat and ★. So much fucking shit that happens in TV3 spins out of these threads it's not even funny.
Best Comedy: I don't wanna just give this to Gus again so... Laurence's death turning into a JRPG was pretty funny, I thought.
The Sunglasses-and-Explosions Award: TV3 is not wanting for great action scenes but I still wanna hand this to When Betting On The High Card Pays Off. Jasper may have only gotten the one action scene but he at least made the most of it.
Best Feeling-Inducer: Still giving it to this scene between Fisk and Vasily. Love awful people with a legitimate affection for their friends and loved ones, and this scene's surprisingly sentimental and touching for characters who are otherwise kind of despicable.
Best Drama: Ashanti holding Mandy hostage was super fun and tense...
Best Surprise: ... and Seo-yun coming to her rescue and killing Matias was a beat I actually kinda didn't see coming.
Teams/Mentors/TV Universe
The Mason Ross Teamwork Award: Ben's Crabs. Lot's of great characters and storylines and my favorite mentor, hands down.
The This-Kill-Is-Brought-To-You-By-Verizon Award: I literally just said-
"You're My Favorite Jellyfish!" Stephanie's betrayal of Sofia on multiple occasions was great shit, both hilarious but also some great drama.
Making The Dream Work: My favorite to win rn is Kaya so my favorite team to win is the Buccaneers by default I suppose.
They're ALL Terrible People? The fuck is wrong with the Crabs anyway? Now their sole survivor is a mass murderer so their near-inevitable loss is very deserved, but the majority of the team was pretty shady.
The Universe Next Door... Everyone should be on Emmy's team and so she doesn't have to watch everyone die and I get out of having to come up with a serious answer for this!
The Scarlet Panther Award For Cooperation Mariner's best team literally none of them gave a shit about the team thing lol
Put Me In, Coach! Mariner's best team, see above for why
Best COTD Tangent: So Kyoko kinda has to win this, but shout out to the "roleplay" thread.
Best Social Media Drama: Jewel's twitter musings are fun to read.
Predictions, Preferences, and Positions
If you could change ANYTHING that has happened thus far, what would you change? Fewer inactives, as inevitable as they are. Admittedly there weren't that many of them, but still.
There are six remaining characters. Which character/team are you counting on to be the last one standing in TV3? Kaya Robinson is my personal favorite for the win, though I'd also be excited to see a Verity or Olivia win (and Ivan too in the last case but I get the sense he's gonna die in Endgame regardless).
How do you predict the ending of TV3 is going to turn out? idk, probably pretty cool if the Final 10 stuff and the version as a whole is an indication.
How much did you enjoy/not enjoy TV3? A whole fucking lot. Super glad this was the first thing I did on the site!
What do you like the most about TV3? Just how high and positive the energy around it has been, to an utterly infectious degree.
What do you think could have been better about the version? How To Avoid Huge Ships should've made it into the game it could've changed everything
What do you think of the overall TV story/world? I dig it a lot! The gonzo reality TV show vibe is a fun spin on the death game shit, and I like how the world, while tonally the "lightest" of the various SOTF universes, is actually quite grim if you scratch so much as a molecule beneath the surface.
What are your hopes for the future of TV, both the smaller games and the eventual TV4? Just hope the fun folks have been having keeps going through the minis I guess.
How do you feel about TV3 compared to TV1 and 2? Nothing to say there.
How do you feel about TV3 compared to other non-TV games? I guess we'll have to wait for BRAU to finish before I can say 100% but I think I liked TV3 best of the games I was in.
Talk About Yourself
What has been your favorite thing to write in TV3? I think still Marion's death thread and then Nadine's own. I think I just like writing death threads.
Which of your TV3 characters was your favorite to write? Golly gee I wonder who
What are you proudest of in TV3? Finishing an RP, or indeed just Any Writing, for once in a way that I was satisfied with. It'd been a while and it was quite a confidence boost.
What do you wish you could improve? Some of those posts have such awkward prose I hate them but they must remain oh well
What is your favorite TV3 memory? Seeing everyone freaking out as Tinnitus hit its final beats and turned into the bedlam of the other Final 10 threads.
A close second is how much fun folks had in the Kyoko art streams. They were a blast to catch every time.
What else would you like to share? Anything goes! Nadine x Marion is canon actually I declare this and definitely mean it
Killer Toasters:
The Basics
Handler Name: almostinhuman
Your Trademark Character: Nadine Flores
Current Status of Trademark Character: I've heard she's recently been dead.
Favorite Character: Akeno still probably handily takes this. What can I say, I love a violent girl with a complex inner world and cool action scenes.
Favorite Weapon: The cheese wheel, cruelly abandoned on the clipper ship and never allowed to unlock its true potential.
Favorite Scene: TINNITUS! Watching this thread unfold in real time was excellently tense and it's a perfect way to bring the Final 10 together and start the whirlwind of crazy shit they got up to.
Favorite Death: Still gotta give this to Pippi's death. I love the preceding conversation between Pippi and Luanne and having the actual death happen between the two/three threads and being told from Anthony's extremely callous perspective. Good shit.
Favorite Quote: "-wanna trade my limited edition run Mandy for your uncommon Fisk?"
Favorite Post: Shoshanna's final post. Love Shoshanna, love a big dramatic speech, love capping off a story on a bittersweet note, emphasis on the bitter.
Favorite Location:The Cruise Ship Banquet Hall. Not only the center of a lot of great scenes but also fun because of how badly it degrades over time, especially once it gets blown the fuck up.
Characters
Best Character Development: Anthony, in a weird way. He starts in such a self-righteous but nominally-pacifistic place, so it was fun to watch that slowly degrade as he gets more and more prone to violent outbursts, barely propped up by that very self-righteous attitude he started with until it eventually comes unglued and leaves him as exactly what he hated.
Best Game Impact: It would be wrong to give this to anybody but Fisk and the Respects. The Respects get entangled in so many storylines, usually leaving a bloody mark on them, and in many ways their drama kind of defined TV3, even with threads and characters that had little-to-nothing to do with them directly.
Best Innovation: Mariko, I suppose? Her D&D stuff was fun.
Best Realism: Cory is intensely grounded and subdued in a version that's often highly theatrical, so in a way he stands out for that. Even his death is kinda subdued, though tragic.
Best Heroic Character: Kermit says if I misspell Luanne's name on purpose again he'll canonize Nadine x Anthony and I don't want that. Anyway she's neat, good on her for all that escape stuff and falling in love with Jewel Evans or whatever.
Best Villainous Character: TV3 has so many great bad guys but my fave is always gonna be Seo-yun. Watching her get slowly torn down as she pursues the ten-kill release, to the point where when she eventually succeeds she can't really enjoy it anymore, was a great thing to watch play out over the game.
Best Tragic Character: Bethan. Her downfall was one you could see coming a mile away but it didn't make it any less tragic.
Best Humorous Character: "I'm a tree."
Best Tactics: I mean, Luanne actually escaped, and (physically) unscathed to boot! Something of a win-by-default.
The Sympathy Award: Most of them, really, but gonna make an outside pick and just beg to let Emmy have like a good fucking moment, geez.
The Empathy Award: Elliot, James and Mandy for more or less the same reason; being someone unsuited to murder and having to survive off the back of someone else's bloody work (in James' case, multiple someones) isn't necessarily sympathetic, but it is super understandable.
The Gone-Too-Soon Award: Literally everyone is gonna say Giselle, but like, come on. GISELLE!
The He-Had-It-Coming Award: Fisk losing literally everything he cares about and dying in a painful and undignified way was, frankly, a long time coming.
The Destined-For-Great-Things Award: We've got such a great crop going into Endgame but I'm particularly excited to see what Verity does.
The Everything Else Award: Leah's gonna get this again bc I forgot to mention her again but seriously she's great go read her.
Scenes and Deaths
Best Tragedy: It Means Everything, not only sad on its own, but a tragedy of ultimately nine deaths (and possibly more depending on how Endgame goes).
The Stomach-Churner Award: Britnee's death still wins this but I've gotta say Fisk and Sofia sure are competitive.
Best Impact: A split between F's in the chat and ★. So much fucking shit that happens in TV3 spins out of these threads it's not even funny.
Best Comedy: I don't wanna just give this to Gus again so... Laurence's death turning into a JRPG was pretty funny, I thought.
The Sunglasses-and-Explosions Award: TV3 is not wanting for great action scenes but I still wanna hand this to When Betting On The High Card Pays Off. Jasper may have only gotten the one action scene but he at least made the most of it.
Best Feeling-Inducer: Still giving it to this scene between Fisk and Vasily. Love awful people with a legitimate affection for their friends and loved ones, and this scene's surprisingly sentimental and touching for characters who are otherwise kind of despicable.
Best Drama: Ashanti holding Mandy hostage was super fun and tense...
Best Surprise: ... and Seo-yun coming to her rescue and killing Matias was a beat I actually kinda didn't see coming.
Teams/Mentors/TV Universe
The Mason Ross Teamwork Award: Ben's Crabs. Lot's of great characters and storylines and my favorite mentor, hands down.
The This-Kill-Is-Brought-To-You-By-Verizon Award: I literally just said-
"You're My Favorite Jellyfish!" Stephanie's betrayal of Sofia on multiple occasions was great shit, both hilarious but also some great drama.
Making The Dream Work: My favorite to win rn is Kaya so my favorite team to win is the Buccaneers by default I suppose.
They're ALL Terrible People? The fuck is wrong with the Crabs anyway? Now their sole survivor is a mass murderer so their near-inevitable loss is very deserved, but the majority of the team was pretty shady.
The Universe Next Door... Everyone should be on Emmy's team and so she doesn't have to watch everyone die and I get out of having to come up with a serious answer for this!
The Scarlet Panther Award For Cooperation Mariner's best team literally none of them gave a shit about the team thing lol
Put Me In, Coach! Mariner's best team, see above for why
Best COTD Tangent: So Kyoko kinda has to win this, but shout out to the "roleplay" thread.
Best Social Media Drama: Jewel's twitter musings are fun to read.
Predictions, Preferences, and Positions
If you could change ANYTHING that has happened thus far, what would you change? Fewer inactives, as inevitable as they are. Admittedly there weren't that many of them, but still.
There are six remaining characters. Which character/team are you counting on to be the last one standing in TV3? Kaya Robinson is my personal favorite for the win, though I'd also be excited to see a Verity or Olivia win (and Ivan too in the last case but I get the sense he's gonna die in Endgame regardless).
How do you predict the ending of TV3 is going to turn out? idk, probably pretty cool if the Final 10 stuff and the version as a whole is an indication.
How much did you enjoy/not enjoy TV3? A whole fucking lot. Super glad this was the first thing I did on the site!
What do you like the most about TV3? Just how high and positive the energy around it has been, to an utterly infectious degree.
What do you think could have been better about the version? How To Avoid Huge Ships should've made it into the game it could've changed everything
What do you think of the overall TV story/world? I dig it a lot! The gonzo reality TV show vibe is a fun spin on the death game shit, and I like how the world, while tonally the "lightest" of the various SOTF universes, is actually quite grim if you scratch so much as a molecule beneath the surface.
What are your hopes for the future of TV, both the smaller games and the eventual TV4? Just hope the fun folks have been having keeps going through the minis I guess.
How do you feel about TV3 compared to TV1 and 2? Nothing to say there.
How do you feel about TV3 compared to other non-TV games? I guess we'll have to wait for BRAU to finish before I can say 100% but I think I liked TV3 best of the games I was in.
Talk About Yourself
What has been your favorite thing to write in TV3? I think still Marion's death thread and then Nadine's own. I think I just like writing death threads.
Which of your TV3 characters was your favorite to write? Golly gee I wonder who
What are you proudest of in TV3? Finishing an RP, or indeed just Any Writing, for once in a way that I was satisfied with. It'd been a while and it was quite a confidence boost.
What do you wish you could improve? Some of those posts have such awkward prose I hate them but they must remain oh well
What is your favorite TV3 memory? Seeing everyone freaking out as Tinnitus hit its final beats and turned into the bedlam of the other Final 10 threads.
A close second is how much fun folks had in the Kyoko art streams. They were a blast to catch every time.
What else would you like to share? Anything goes! Nadine x Marion is canon actually I declare this and definitely mean it
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MurderWeasel
- Posts: 3442
- Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2018 9:56 am
- Team Affiliation: Jewel's Leviathans
Killer Toasters:
The Basics
Handler Name: MW
Your Trademark Character: I tend to answer this flippantly, so let's go with the obvious: my highest-placing TV character.
Current Status of Trademark Character: Sacrificed to the roll gods so that Mason could live.
Favorite Character: This time I'm going to give the nod to Shoshanna Kowalczyk, as probably the most steady and driven leader of the (mostly) ill-fated escape group. The thing about Shoshanna that's so cool is the way she plays out plot and character beats at the same time in a way that advance both. Shoshanna also engaged with the concept of escape in the TV universe in a fascinating way, in that she had a much less antagonistic relationship with the concept of the game than most would-be escapees in other versions. I'm sad about how relatively early she went out, but she remains a highlight and Laurels should be really proud of the work he did.
Favorite Weapon: Small Bag of Cocaine. So, first off, Shiola was right and we should've let this just be a big block because that's funny. That aside, drugs have been assigned a bunch of times in SOTF, but this time specifically they drove a lot of fun weirdness from multiple characters, providing Laura with motivation and Fisk with an avenue to be even more Fiskish than sober.
Favorite Scene: There are way too many good ones, but I'm going to give a nod to Go For Broke for the pure chaotic clown car nature of it, as thing after thing piles on in a way that probably still has Kermit waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. It's a scene totally full of drama and action and almost every piece of it is totally pointless and avoidable, but all the characters who are wise enough to realize that are totally impotent when it comes to stopping the disintegration, so they're forced to just hang on for dear life and hope they're not thrown off the roller coaster. It's almost hard to believe nobody in this thread dies, or even gets particularly seriously hurt.
Favorite Death: I'm gonna do a twofer here: either Ivan's killing of Vasily or else his killing of James. These two deaths are similar in some ways, beyond the killer. Both are muted, understated, and about aftermath more than action. This is a pretty fascinating choice because, as a character, Ivan carries a lot of action weight—NAFT is the guy who more or less wrote the guide on fight scenes, but that's not what tehse deaths are about. Vasily's centers on fatigue, inevitability, and this moment that kind of approximates connection. James, on the other hand, is pure metaphor and aftermath. They're really fresh takes that keep the storyline vital and vibrant.
Favorite Quote: "STOOOOOOOOKES!" Fisk yelled over the booming, uh, boombox. "I WANNA TALK TO THE MAAA~AAAANAGER OF THIS ESTABLISHMENT! I BROUGHT THE BEEEEETER BUISNEEESS BURRREEEAAAUU WITH MEEEEE!"
The Better Business Bureau thing cracked me up harder than probably anything anyone else has said all version, and I'm not even entirely sure why. I think part of it's the combination of Fisk's high-key, dramatic delivery, the actual horror of the situation (he's rolling in with a gang to murder Stokes), and the banal mundanity of the largely-useless BBB being invoked. It just all comes together in a way where every time I think about it I chuckle all over again.
Favorite Post: Gonna do two again. First up, Dale sings Alanis. This is just a masterfully paced post that carries us through Dale's mental state without ever leaning too hard on it or being too obvious. It makes great use of the environment, brings a clever and fresh detail into play, and manages to be a completely diegetic songpost where the song chosen and how it's present does serious lifting for characterization.
The other one I love a lot is Luanne saying nothing, but I'm not going to explain why.
Favorite Location: I'm giving the nod to the shop, and I don't mean the shop boat. The restaurant has a fun vibe, but that's not what sets it apart. The cool thing here is that a handful of characters took it over, redefined it, and then made it feel like its own little personal area in a different way to what we've seen before... something the continued even after the original inhabitants' death/ouster, as the newcomers redecorated. It's a neat trick that really created its own special vibe for the arena.
Characters
Best Character Development: What character development has kept you intrigued? I'm giving this one to Anthony Golden. On a quantitative level, of course, Anthony has covered a huge amount of ground, going from staunchly anti-game to self-righteous hunter to resigned player on a path for vengeance. What's great about it, though, is that no matter what stage of this process he's at, Anthony has the same core flaws and tendencies. He's prickly, unwilling to listen in the moment or consider that he might be wrong, stubborn, and vindictive. So, while he has absolutely changed, I think he wants us to believe he's made more progress than he actually has, and that's 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? So this particular time we have a bit of a hybrid of IC and OOC impact, but I simply have to go with Matias Juarez. Matias pulled a Liz Polanski in the way other than the collar thing, and through his demise sent two different characters home OOC. But, better still, he serves as one of the final points of contact IC for those same two characters, setting them on their final paths towards brighter futures. And Matias is no slouch on the influence front aside from the late stages, either, managing to kick off a few key moments, including one of the biggest team meetings we've ever seen, and serving as the inciting factor to several major points of conflict/violence.
Best Innovation: Which character has been a breath of fresh air for you? I'm going to toss this one to Ivan Rodriguez, because despite being in some ways not too far outside his handler's comfort zone, in others he's constantly pushing boundaries and quietly has been since Sandbox. Ivan's narrative doesn't make things easy on either the reader or the characters he's threading with, but in a way that allows the form of his posts and threads to be shaped by (and thus evoke) the content they depict. There are half a dozen different things I could call out here, but one of the most impressive and cool parts of Ivan is that all of it's going on simultaneously and yet he remains a coherent and enjoyable read.
Best Realism: Which character is really grounded in reality in a way you find appealing? I'm going to do a two for one here and highlight Elliott-Blair Østergaard and Gabriela Garcia-Campos, specifically in the context of their relationship. SOTF has a long history of characters manipulating and using each other, and by and large these plots are not particularly well executed. Even when they are, they tend to be these grand, theatrical, Machiavellian things. Gabby and Elliot-Blair, however, have their dynamic built around a core of genuine affection and a dynamic that existed before the game, and the way this is weighed against the pressures of the situation, the frustrations they experience with each other, the degree to which they know their goals are untenable but still feel obligated to continue because no other workable option presents itself, that's all amazing psychological work that feels both subtle and highly authentic.
Best Heroic Character: Which good guy has you solidly on their side? Since I'm doing new nominations only I can't do Rhonda again, so I think I'm going to give this one (memes aside) to Nadine Flroes. Nadine is a fascinating and successful character in part because she's such a solid supporting cast member, working to assist in the search for escape even as she moves from group to group (mostly due to the hideous demise of the other group members). She's not really one of the more ideologically driven would-be escapees, but in a lot of ways that makes her more compelling; she's sometimes reluctant and sometimes a little shifty, but when it matters she does her best and comes through, and her death scene sees her making the best stand she can.
Best Villainous Character: Who is your favorite ne'er-do-well? This time, I'll give the nod to Eric Cunningham. Espi does a great job making Eric really believable in his arrogance and generally unpleasant demeanor, and sells him as a threat not due to any tremendous skill or malice, but rather a level of cleverness and willingness to use situations to his advantage. This allows Eric to operate in a different vein than most of the other TV3 villains, which made him stand out well in a crowded (and overall high quality field). I also appreciate that the route to his downfall is a logical chain of thought developing as a natural result of his strategy starting to fall apart.
Best Tragic Character: Whose sad and inevitable fate have you most enjoyed lamenting? I'm going to take a perhaps slightly unconventional pick here and nominate Beau Lively. Beau was an incredibly nice guy who did his best, even if his best was kind of goofy and not always that successful, and yet all it brought him in the game was punishment and suffering. While he tried to keep his chin up, the stress of being repeatedly attacked and of knowing his friends were turning on each other wore him down to the point that he threw in the towel, but in one final cruel twist of fate the friend he convinced to do him in was pushed—partially by this moment—into turning into one of the least justified murderers in the game, adding a dark tint even to Beau's exit.
Best Humorous Character: Which character made you laugh the most? (Intentional humor only, please. Be nice!) I'm kind of tired so good thing I left myself a freebie by not picking Gustavo Thicke last time. Gus' moment of method acting is incredible, especially due to how out of place it is with the arena we ended up using for TV3. His exit is equally fun, a callback to one of the wackier moments of TV1 (and one that actually fits the current zeitgeist quite well; Vinny was ahead of the curve with the posthumous stingers). RC is one of the funniest writers on the site just due to his sheer talent for originality, and Gus is another great example of this top to bottom.
Best Tactics: Through elimination of the competition or a solid plan for survival, who's kept you interested in their struggle to make it back home? So I know I just said that success doesn't justify locking down this category, but I've got to pick Luanne Grasset here. There are tales to be told eventually perhaps, but the short version is that Luanne tried an incredible amount of really creative things en route to her success, and legitimately took me by surprise a few times... which is exactly where you want to be if you're pushing against the system.
The Sympathy Award: Which character did you feel the most for, and most want good things for? All of the would-be escapees fall into this one, but I'm going to especially highlight Rhonda Rollins here because she had an especially hard and fraught run. There were so many points where it seemed like she might be able to link up with the others and push things towards a happier conclusion, but time and again something would go wrong or someone would die and she just ran out of time. But she never stopped trying.
The Empathy Award: Which character could you most easily put yourself in the shoes of? So, very different mentalities and skillsets and such, but I find Akeno Kudo's struggle between morals and pragmatism, and her feeling pulled to help friends while at the same time knowing that doing so is against her ultimate self interests, very compelling and understandable. Fenrir has done an amazing job laying out her thought processes in a way that makes them pretty irresistible, even though she's far from a "good guy" if you zoom out a little.
The Gone-Too-Soon Award: Which deceased character should have stuck around a little longer? She made it a good long way, but I never ever got tired of Leah Hemingway and while I feel like she got a lot of mileage out of her run, I also think she could've done even more if rolls had been kinder. There are lots of great kids in TV3 who could've used some more time, but Leah remains a favorite.
The He-Had-It-Coming Award: Who best earned their (possibly still forthcoming) demise? I'm going to break the letter of the question in service of the spirit and say that Maddie did an amazing job setting up Seo-yun Lee to suffer consequences for her misdeeds that aren't just death, but are in their own way similarly painful and damaging. One of the hard liens to walk with a villain is what their presumed downfall will look like, and with Seo-yun she won the battle but the war is still up in the air, as she's been devastated physically and emotionally and come to the horrible conclusion that nothing about making it out of the game will be like she thought it would.
The Destined-For-Great-Things Award: Who are you hoping to see make a big splash in the remainder of the game? So I think legitimately everyone left is great and has a lot of room to find highlights, but i'm specifically going to shout out Mary Cheung as a character who's had a largely internal and kind of quiet game that has nevertheless built up some great tension and seems primed to bubble over in fascinating and cool ways here at the end.
The Everything Else Award: If it doesn't fit anywhere above but you want to give it a shoutout, put it here.
I'm probably going to add more content here later, but for now this goes to Pippi, who was really something else!
Scenes and Deaths
Best Tragedy: Which scene or death made you the most teary eyed? It's certainly not the most tragic pound for pound, but I have to give it to Fisk's grief over Giselle's death. What makes this special is that it's a moment of completely believable, painful humanity, which can in that instant get us on Fisk's side despite the fact that he's absolutely one of the most terrible people in the game and the person whose death he's lamenting was just as bad. It's a beat that shows the emotion and fallout, even on those who want to be above it all (and Fisk is good for a few of these throughout the game).
The Stomach-Churner Award: Which scene or death has most effectively played with the gory/violent/overall disturbing side of the game? Lots of good stuff here (and I of course want to shout out Gregory's flaying in part for knowing when to not go full on graphic) but one of the things that really stuck with me was Elliot-Blair's description of Calla's body, and really a few of the depictions of death in the back half of his story. Retro doesn't dwell too much on it, but pulls out just the right beats to make things suitably gross and upsetting, even if the violence was in the past.
Best Impact: Which scene or death do you think best played a positive role in changing the course of the game? I have two nominations here. The first is ★, the first thread (and death) of the version, which opened it with a level of sprawling, emotional weirdness that turned out to be a pretty on-point intro to what TV3 as a whole would be doing. It was wrapped up in friendship and betrayal, with a side of blurring the lines between form and story, and it had IC influence in the form of starting Verity on a path that has continued until now (and constantly circles back to it).
My other pick is the two biggest escape groups linking up because this really set the tone for the escape plotline in TV3, casting it as a bloody, fumbling relay race as various figures came and went but the goal remained the same. Nobody in this thread made it to participate in the actual dash to freedom, but all of them had their little pieces of influence on it.
Best Comedy: Which scene or death served as the best comic relief? Dark humor throughout, but I want to give a nod to the thread that saw Alaska's and Sylvain's deaths. The group was one that overflowed with attitude and humor, both in larger interactions and in smaller moments, with Sylvain and Laura serving as constantly entertaining PoVs while antagonizing everything that moved, and Sergio swooping in with scene-stealing one-liners. A good reminder that tragedy and comedy are not mutually exclusive.
The Sunglasses-and-Explosions Award: Which scene or death had the best action going on? We've had a lot of chase scenes over the years, including a fair few spanning multiple threads, but few have stuck the landing as well as Gregory's doomed flight from the Respects. What really sells this one for me is that it doesn't waste time being too sprawling. It cuts in on the key moments, gives the important beats to sell the emotion and chaos, and then moves on. Special shout-out to Verity being out of breath all the time.
Also, of course, a positive word in this category has to go to Akeno, who lives and breathes excellent action scenes to the point that singling one out in specific is nigh impossible (and if I did, it'd be the one I gave this to at halfway).
Best Feeling-Inducer: Which scene or death provoked the best emotional reaction from you? I really dug the scene where Gabby and Elliot-Blair consider abandoning the plan and then don't. It's a wonderful moment because their paths have led them to this point where they've sunk so much time and effort and hope into this horrible course of action, and can see that it probably won't pay off, but their care for each other and the distance they've already traveled mean they can't figure any way out other than to try to just keep muscling through. Powerful and tragic stuff.
Best Drama: Which scene or death had you on the edge of your seat in the way of conflict, suspense, or drama? I really enjoyed the conversation between Junji and Caleb. It's a great moment of tension where one party is playing with fire without realizing it, and Slam does a great job of telegraphing Junji's evolving (and worsening) mood. It also stands out for leading directly into a death despite nobody being rolled; Courtney deserves a tip of the hat for following the logic of the scene to its inevitable conclusion, and keeping it from feeling predictable at the same time.
Best Surprise: Which scene or death caught you most off guard in a pleasant way, either through its unpredictable nature or its unique execution? RJ heel turns right before his death. Swinging a character's path is a risky choice even in normal circumstances, and to go in on a player turn from a character knowing that they aren't going to really get to dwell in that space for long takes real guts. AnimeNerd took what could've been a pretty standard rematch and made it something really different due to RJ's evolution in perspective. Cool stuff.
Teams/Mentors/TV Universe
The Mason Ross Teamwork Award: Credit to NAFT for the name. Which is your favorite team this season? There are no bad teams, but I think the lack of much team pride makes it easy to forget just how stacked the Krakens were in terms of quality, interesting characters. Every single one of them was involved in something cool during their time in the game, and those who went out early in most cases left a real impression while doing so. I also enjoyed how the vast majority of them immediately dunked on, chewed out, or stated their intent to ignore their mentor, which gave them a really plucky, confrontational sort of vibe.
The This-Kill-Is-Brought-To-You-By-Verizon Award: Who is your favorite mentor from this cast? Since I'm not doubling down on Ben, I'm going to give some love to Stephanie of the Buccaneers for consistently innovating and offering an unexpectedly and quietly involved personal arc. Stephanie's interesting in that her own path through the game was complicated, as is her current relationship with it, and yet at the same time she became more personally invested than many of the others, even sabotaging one of her own as retribution for a betrayal.
I also need to, of course, offer a nod to the best, most competent mentor on the cast, who was horribly cheated with a time in the spotlight cut unjustly short preemptively.
"You're My Favorite Jellyfish!" What is your favorite use or subversion of team/mentor mechanics or relationships this season? Rattle, question namesake, takes it again with everything about the dynamic between Anthony and Ben but extra especially this thread where the relationship finally disintegrates. The sheer frustration and incoherent ire displayed by Ben is an amazing piece of character work, and while we've seen a number of students turn on their teams this version, none have made it so personal as Anthony. It's a thread highlight for me full stop, and the only reason it wasn't shortlisted for my favorite of the version was I knew I was going to be talking about it here.
Making The Dream Work: Which team are you rooting for to find success? This was a tie between the Selkies and the Leviathans, but I gave it to the Selkies last time, so...
One of the things I appreciate about the remaining Leviathans is that they've both traced unconventional paths through the game, suffering hardships distinct from the more common fights and deaths of friends (though there's been some of that too). Now, at the final stage, they've found themselves in a real alliance despite not actually liking each other much at all in other contexts, which is a great feature of the team system and gives them a certain dysfunctional underdog appeal.
They're ALL Terrible People? Which team has thoroughly earned its inevitable downfall? This stretches my commitment to not reusing these, considering I'm literally proposing renaming this category in honor of the Crabs, but I suppose I'll also give a shout-out to the Sirens, While a decent number of them had good intentions, they also include a number of very high-profile villains, and even the more lowkey tended to be either proactively seeking trouble of somewhat disconcerting in some manner or other. Well, except poor Caleb, who comparatively did nothing wrong. Unless you ask Junji, of course...
The Universe Next Door... If you could move one character to another team, who would it be and where would they go? I think, given how their respective arcs went, that it would've been fascinating to have Amy Barrows-Shaw as a member of the Buccaneers (much as I loved having her on my team, and believe me, I did). Amy was a character whose path was heavily shaped by her interactions with the team concept, and this left her unable to trust her friends, causing her to murder one and then perish to retribution from her teammate. In a world where Amy is on the same team as Kaya and Bethan, I think things could've swung in a much less dark direction, and while still being a volatile situation full of potential conflict.
The Scarlet Panther Award For Cooperation Which team's dynamic and interactions with their assigned allies have you enjoyed the most? I'm going to pick the Mariners on part because this team had a distinct lack of successful team dynamic. It was oddly common for Mariners to jump to other groups for safety, and one of the best quiet team-based plotlines was Gabby picking off other Mariners in an effort to send Elliot-Blair home with the ten... something which ultimately ended with him the last of the team standing and no early release in sight.
Put Me In, Coach! Which team would you want to be on if you were in TV? Since I'm passing on repeats, I'm going to go with the Selkies, because they had good teamwork (except when it came to dealing with deserters) and they have a mentor who genuinely is invested in their survival, albeit not always in a good personal spot to contribute a ton towards it.
Best COTD Tangent: What's been your favorite piece of work from the in-character TV fan forum? This is the one exception I'm cutting myself re: doubling up. Long live Kyoko Sakura-Chan! Everything's been tons of fun on COTD and there are so many wonderful things, but nothing can challenge the sheer joy of these incredible MS Paint masterpieces that have left a permanent mark on site culture that even goes beyond TV.
Best Social Media Drama: What TV-related social media musings have most positively caught your attention?
Elliot doesn't come online that often, but he's one of my favorite TV lore personalities just for the vibes he brings. I also love Noreen teasing the Burton Harris maneuver, just for the memes. Really, though, everyone who's been active has again put in some great work.
Predictions, Preferences, and Positions
If you could change ANYTHING that has happened thus far, what would you change? Aside from wishing characters hadn't gone inactive, my big one is actually that I wish the rolls had come down on the escape brigade in a slightly less brutal way. I super love Luanne and think her solo breakout is amazing, but I feel like there were several moments where larger groups were poised on the edge of making some progress only to be thrown off course by rolls hitting one character and then another the next set, and it would've been really cool to see some of the other amazing kids involved in the plot get more of a chance to make it further too.
There are ten remaining characters. Which character/team are you counting on to be the last one standing in TV3? So, while I have preferences, they're pretty slight and change on a dime. I think TV3 has a super strong cast on the whole, and while it's exciting to have a team win actually possible, I also think the kids left can pull their own weight for solo focus as well if that's how the cookie crumbles. I think we're in for something really cool whoever takes it.
How do you predict the ending of TV3 is going to turn out? I think it'll be a blast with a bunch of cool stuff happening just due to the great cast we have left, IC and OOC. This has been one of the most consistently active, creative, high energy versions, and I think all of those things are going to carry through.
How much did you enjoy/not enjoy TV3? TV3 is some of the most fun I've had, and a lot of that's down to the really positive, supportive atmosphere throughout. Watching all of chat turn out to celebrate Seo-yun and Luanne is a great snapshot of what's been so nice about it. I also enjoy how ambitious everyone's been while still being open to compromise and willing to try new things.
What do you like the most about TV3? Far and away the best thing about TV3 for me has been a highly invested, highly positive community and atmosphere surrounding it. Handlers have been very willing to engage with each other's works, celebrate each other's successes, and give each other benefit of the doubt. I've also been really happy with the warm welcome some newer members have received; it's not every version where the entry point is really smooth, and I'm proud of the community for treating folks well.
What do you think could have been better about the version? A small thing, but I think there are a few opportunities we had to get even a little more wild with stuff that would've been fun. Things like getting nervous about the cannon on the clipper ship being functional and so on weren't exactly bad stances to have, but the community has mostly been really responsible and keyed to fun this version and has taught a lot about extending the benefit of the doubt, and in hindsight I would bring that in wherever possible.
What do you think of the overall TV story/world? The overall TV world/story is my favorite in the SOTF family for a pretty simple reason: it's dynamic and collaborative in a way that speaks to me a lot. While it wasn't intentionally built this way, it ended up the setting where handlers can put their own spin on stuff and add little details/play around in the world in a way that engages with the game more than what's possible in other versions (due to its status as pop culture phenomenon) and at the same time the various lore seasons bring handler-created work into play and spread a teeny slice of the winner experience. And, of course, whatever happens in one version can ripple into the next in a way the other games don't quite do.
What are your hopes for the future of TV, both the smaller games and the eventual TV4? Basically the stuff we're doing. The smaller seasons are an experiment, but one that I hope will help make the games faster and more accessible without taking the luster away from the periodic big event versions. I just want to keep the good vibes going and have a bunch more fun games that play with other angles offered by TV.
How do you feel about TV3 compared to TV1 and 2? TV3 is pretty cleanly the favorite for me. TV1 laid the path for a lot of what Mini's about, and has pretty strong V1 vibes overall... but part of that includes having pretty inconsistent quality in some areas and wildly different levels of effort/engagement going on. TV2 has some really high highlights, but also cheerfully made a lot of the mistakes TV1 made on accident but this time on purpose. It also had probably the most strained OOC environment we've had on Mini, for a range of reasons. TV3 brings good vibes, a very high average to go along with the high peaks, and a much fuller understanding of the universe.
How do you feel about TV3 compared to other non-TV games? It's some of the most fun I've had overall, and that's really down to the good environment, willingness to try new things, and support—especially for newer handlers just getting into everything. It was also very satisfying to see some of the things we tried as experiments pay off.
Talk About Yourself
What has been your favorite thing to write in TV3? I half hate putting a one-shot here, but the saga of Mandy spending an actual day locked in a bathroom was some of the most fun I've had in a while, and I want to give a big shout-out to Brackie for enabling it.
Which of your TV3 characters was your favorite to write? In terms of PCs, Mandy wins because her specific vibe lets me hit a lot of beats I personally am amused by. Overall, though doing the mentor thing is a ton of fun because it allows me to interact with a whole bunch of characters and stories in a really different sort of way.
What are you proudest of in TV3? One of my big goals in TV3 was to write characters who fall into more of a supportive role, as opposed to my very center-stagey characters from TV1 and 2. I went in consciously planning to try to use them to help other folks shine, while hopefully still having enough interesting stuff going on on their own to be fun to read. I generally feel pretty good about how that worked out, and it's always nice to have intent pay off like that.
What do you wish you could improve? It definitely took me a little to really get in gear with the version, and I think a better, more invested Sandbox showing would've been nice. Also, by virtue of being attached to characters who did a bunch of kill scenes, I ended up in way more private threads than I like to, and I think that in many cases the best beats I got were from venturing outside those private threads (the assault on the banquet hall being a great example of this—it was a massive public mess, but I think a highlight for a bunch of characters). I want to remind folks that private threads aren't the only option, even for deaths, and try to walk us back as whole/prod my groups to be less particular.
What is your favorite TV3 memory? Anytime everyone got super hyped for something. The start of the version, Seo-yun and Luanne, the F10 stuff. Also those Kyoko streams I actually managed to catch.
What else would you like to share? Anything goes! These were compiled from a thread I filled out roughly 18 months ago. I was too lazy to smush them together right away, then I forgot, then I finally got reminded. I initially intended to do some editing, but it has been exceedingly minimal as that would make it take even longer to happen. Perfect can be the enemy of good and such.
The Basics
Handler Name: MW
Your Trademark Character: I tend to answer this flippantly, so let's go with the obvious: my highest-placing TV character.
Current Status of Trademark Character: Sacrificed to the roll gods so that Mason could live.
Favorite Character: This time I'm going to give the nod to Shoshanna Kowalczyk, as probably the most steady and driven leader of the (mostly) ill-fated escape group. The thing about Shoshanna that's so cool is the way she plays out plot and character beats at the same time in a way that advance both. Shoshanna also engaged with the concept of escape in the TV universe in a fascinating way, in that she had a much less antagonistic relationship with the concept of the game than most would-be escapees in other versions. I'm sad about how relatively early she went out, but she remains a highlight and Laurels should be really proud of the work he did.
Favorite Weapon: Small Bag of Cocaine. So, first off, Shiola was right and we should've let this just be a big block because that's funny. That aside, drugs have been assigned a bunch of times in SOTF, but this time specifically they drove a lot of fun weirdness from multiple characters, providing Laura with motivation and Fisk with an avenue to be even more Fiskish than sober.
Favorite Scene: There are way too many good ones, but I'm going to give a nod to Go For Broke for the pure chaotic clown car nature of it, as thing after thing piles on in a way that probably still has Kermit waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. It's a scene totally full of drama and action and almost every piece of it is totally pointless and avoidable, but all the characters who are wise enough to realize that are totally impotent when it comes to stopping the disintegration, so they're forced to just hang on for dear life and hope they're not thrown off the roller coaster. It's almost hard to believe nobody in this thread dies, or even gets particularly seriously hurt.
Favorite Death: I'm gonna do a twofer here: either Ivan's killing of Vasily or else his killing of James. These two deaths are similar in some ways, beyond the killer. Both are muted, understated, and about aftermath more than action. This is a pretty fascinating choice because, as a character, Ivan carries a lot of action weight—NAFT is the guy who more or less wrote the guide on fight scenes, but that's not what tehse deaths are about. Vasily's centers on fatigue, inevitability, and this moment that kind of approximates connection. James, on the other hand, is pure metaphor and aftermath. They're really fresh takes that keep the storyline vital and vibrant.
Favorite Quote: "STOOOOOOOOKES!" Fisk yelled over the booming, uh, boombox. "I WANNA TALK TO THE MAAA~AAAANAGER OF THIS ESTABLISHMENT! I BROUGHT THE BEEEEETER BUISNEEESS BURRREEEAAAUU WITH MEEEEE!"
The Better Business Bureau thing cracked me up harder than probably anything anyone else has said all version, and I'm not even entirely sure why. I think part of it's the combination of Fisk's high-key, dramatic delivery, the actual horror of the situation (he's rolling in with a gang to murder Stokes), and the banal mundanity of the largely-useless BBB being invoked. It just all comes together in a way where every time I think about it I chuckle all over again.
Favorite Post: Gonna do two again. First up, Dale sings Alanis. This is just a masterfully paced post that carries us through Dale's mental state without ever leaning too hard on it or being too obvious. It makes great use of the environment, brings a clever and fresh detail into play, and manages to be a completely diegetic songpost where the song chosen and how it's present does serious lifting for characterization.
The other one I love a lot is Luanne saying nothing, but I'm not going to explain why.
Favorite Location: I'm giving the nod to the shop, and I don't mean the shop boat. The restaurant has a fun vibe, but that's not what sets it apart. The cool thing here is that a handful of characters took it over, redefined it, and then made it feel like its own little personal area in a different way to what we've seen before... something the continued even after the original inhabitants' death/ouster, as the newcomers redecorated. It's a neat trick that really created its own special vibe for the arena.
Characters
Best Character Development: What character development has kept you intrigued? I'm giving this one to Anthony Golden. On a quantitative level, of course, Anthony has covered a huge amount of ground, going from staunchly anti-game to self-righteous hunter to resigned player on a path for vengeance. What's great about it, though, is that no matter what stage of this process he's at, Anthony has the same core flaws and tendencies. He's prickly, unwilling to listen in the moment or consider that he might be wrong, stubborn, and vindictive. So, while he has absolutely changed, I think he wants us to believe he's made more progress than he actually has, and that's 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? So this particular time we have a bit of a hybrid of IC and OOC impact, but I simply have to go with Matias Juarez. Matias pulled a Liz Polanski in the way other than the collar thing, and through his demise sent two different characters home OOC. But, better still, he serves as one of the final points of contact IC for those same two characters, setting them on their final paths towards brighter futures. And Matias is no slouch on the influence front aside from the late stages, either, managing to kick off a few key moments, including one of the biggest team meetings we've ever seen, and serving as the inciting factor to several major points of conflict/violence.
Best Innovation: Which character has been a breath of fresh air for you? I'm going to toss this one to Ivan Rodriguez, because despite being in some ways not too far outside his handler's comfort zone, in others he's constantly pushing boundaries and quietly has been since Sandbox. Ivan's narrative doesn't make things easy on either the reader or the characters he's threading with, but in a way that allows the form of his posts and threads to be shaped by (and thus evoke) the content they depict. There are half a dozen different things I could call out here, but one of the most impressive and cool parts of Ivan is that all of it's going on simultaneously and yet he remains a coherent and enjoyable read.
Best Realism: Which character is really grounded in reality in a way you find appealing? I'm going to do a two for one here and highlight Elliott-Blair Østergaard and Gabriela Garcia-Campos, specifically in the context of their relationship. SOTF has a long history of characters manipulating and using each other, and by and large these plots are not particularly well executed. Even when they are, they tend to be these grand, theatrical, Machiavellian things. Gabby and Elliot-Blair, however, have their dynamic built around a core of genuine affection and a dynamic that existed before the game, and the way this is weighed against the pressures of the situation, the frustrations they experience with each other, the degree to which they know their goals are untenable but still feel obligated to continue because no other workable option presents itself, that's all amazing psychological work that feels both subtle and highly authentic.
Best Heroic Character: Which good guy has you solidly on their side? Since I'm doing new nominations only I can't do Rhonda again, so I think I'm going to give this one (memes aside) to Nadine Flroes. Nadine is a fascinating and successful character in part because she's such a solid supporting cast member, working to assist in the search for escape even as she moves from group to group (mostly due to the hideous demise of the other group members). She's not really one of the more ideologically driven would-be escapees, but in a lot of ways that makes her more compelling; she's sometimes reluctant and sometimes a little shifty, but when it matters she does her best and comes through, and her death scene sees her making the best stand she can.
Best Villainous Character: Who is your favorite ne'er-do-well? This time, I'll give the nod to Eric Cunningham. Espi does a great job making Eric really believable in his arrogance and generally unpleasant demeanor, and sells him as a threat not due to any tremendous skill or malice, but rather a level of cleverness and willingness to use situations to his advantage. This allows Eric to operate in a different vein than most of the other TV3 villains, which made him stand out well in a crowded (and overall high quality field). I also appreciate that the route to his downfall is a logical chain of thought developing as a natural result of his strategy starting to fall apart.
Best Tragic Character: Whose sad and inevitable fate have you most enjoyed lamenting? I'm going to take a perhaps slightly unconventional pick here and nominate Beau Lively. Beau was an incredibly nice guy who did his best, even if his best was kind of goofy and not always that successful, and yet all it brought him in the game was punishment and suffering. While he tried to keep his chin up, the stress of being repeatedly attacked and of knowing his friends were turning on each other wore him down to the point that he threw in the towel, but in one final cruel twist of fate the friend he convinced to do him in was pushed—partially by this moment—into turning into one of the least justified murderers in the game, adding a dark tint even to Beau's exit.
Best Humorous Character: Which character made you laugh the most? (Intentional humor only, please. Be nice!) I'm kind of tired so good thing I left myself a freebie by not picking Gustavo Thicke last time. Gus' moment of method acting is incredible, especially due to how out of place it is with the arena we ended up using for TV3. His exit is equally fun, a callback to one of the wackier moments of TV1 (and one that actually fits the current zeitgeist quite well; Vinny was ahead of the curve with the posthumous stingers). RC is one of the funniest writers on the site just due to his sheer talent for originality, and Gus is another great example of this top to bottom.
Best Tactics: Through elimination of the competition or a solid plan for survival, who's kept you interested in their struggle to make it back home? So I know I just said that success doesn't justify locking down this category, but I've got to pick Luanne Grasset here. There are tales to be told eventually perhaps, but the short version is that Luanne tried an incredible amount of really creative things en route to her success, and legitimately took me by surprise a few times... which is exactly where you want to be if you're pushing against the system.
The Sympathy Award: Which character did you feel the most for, and most want good things for? All of the would-be escapees fall into this one, but I'm going to especially highlight Rhonda Rollins here because she had an especially hard and fraught run. There were so many points where it seemed like she might be able to link up with the others and push things towards a happier conclusion, but time and again something would go wrong or someone would die and she just ran out of time. But she never stopped trying.
The Empathy Award: Which character could you most easily put yourself in the shoes of? So, very different mentalities and skillsets and such, but I find Akeno Kudo's struggle between morals and pragmatism, and her feeling pulled to help friends while at the same time knowing that doing so is against her ultimate self interests, very compelling and understandable. Fenrir has done an amazing job laying out her thought processes in a way that makes them pretty irresistible, even though she's far from a "good guy" if you zoom out a little.
The Gone-Too-Soon Award: Which deceased character should have stuck around a little longer? She made it a good long way, but I never ever got tired of Leah Hemingway and while I feel like she got a lot of mileage out of her run, I also think she could've done even more if rolls had been kinder. There are lots of great kids in TV3 who could've used some more time, but Leah remains a favorite.
The He-Had-It-Coming Award: Who best earned their (possibly still forthcoming) demise? I'm going to break the letter of the question in service of the spirit and say that Maddie did an amazing job setting up Seo-yun Lee to suffer consequences for her misdeeds that aren't just death, but are in their own way similarly painful and damaging. One of the hard liens to walk with a villain is what their presumed downfall will look like, and with Seo-yun she won the battle but the war is still up in the air, as she's been devastated physically and emotionally and come to the horrible conclusion that nothing about making it out of the game will be like she thought it would.
The Destined-For-Great-Things Award: Who are you hoping to see make a big splash in the remainder of the game? So I think legitimately everyone left is great and has a lot of room to find highlights, but i'm specifically going to shout out Mary Cheung as a character who's had a largely internal and kind of quiet game that has nevertheless built up some great tension and seems primed to bubble over in fascinating and cool ways here at the end.
The Everything Else Award: If it doesn't fit anywhere above but you want to give it a shoutout, put it here.
I'm probably going to add more content here later, but for now this goes to Pippi, who was really something else!
Scenes and Deaths
Best Tragedy: Which scene or death made you the most teary eyed? It's certainly not the most tragic pound for pound, but I have to give it to Fisk's grief over Giselle's death. What makes this special is that it's a moment of completely believable, painful humanity, which can in that instant get us on Fisk's side despite the fact that he's absolutely one of the most terrible people in the game and the person whose death he's lamenting was just as bad. It's a beat that shows the emotion and fallout, even on those who want to be above it all (and Fisk is good for a few of these throughout the game).
The Stomach-Churner Award: Which scene or death has most effectively played with the gory/violent/overall disturbing side of the game? Lots of good stuff here (and I of course want to shout out Gregory's flaying in part for knowing when to not go full on graphic) but one of the things that really stuck with me was Elliot-Blair's description of Calla's body, and really a few of the depictions of death in the back half of his story. Retro doesn't dwell too much on it, but pulls out just the right beats to make things suitably gross and upsetting, even if the violence was in the past.
Best Impact: Which scene or death do you think best played a positive role in changing the course of the game? I have two nominations here. The first is ★, the first thread (and death) of the version, which opened it with a level of sprawling, emotional weirdness that turned out to be a pretty on-point intro to what TV3 as a whole would be doing. It was wrapped up in friendship and betrayal, with a side of blurring the lines between form and story, and it had IC influence in the form of starting Verity on a path that has continued until now (and constantly circles back to it).
My other pick is the two biggest escape groups linking up because this really set the tone for the escape plotline in TV3, casting it as a bloody, fumbling relay race as various figures came and went but the goal remained the same. Nobody in this thread made it to participate in the actual dash to freedom, but all of them had their little pieces of influence on it.
Best Comedy: Which scene or death served as the best comic relief? Dark humor throughout, but I want to give a nod to the thread that saw Alaska's and Sylvain's deaths. The group was one that overflowed with attitude and humor, both in larger interactions and in smaller moments, with Sylvain and Laura serving as constantly entertaining PoVs while antagonizing everything that moved, and Sergio swooping in with scene-stealing one-liners. A good reminder that tragedy and comedy are not mutually exclusive.
The Sunglasses-and-Explosions Award: Which scene or death had the best action going on? We've had a lot of chase scenes over the years, including a fair few spanning multiple threads, but few have stuck the landing as well as Gregory's doomed flight from the Respects. What really sells this one for me is that it doesn't waste time being too sprawling. It cuts in on the key moments, gives the important beats to sell the emotion and chaos, and then moves on. Special shout-out to Verity being out of breath all the time.
Also, of course, a positive word in this category has to go to Akeno, who lives and breathes excellent action scenes to the point that singling one out in specific is nigh impossible (and if I did, it'd be the one I gave this to at halfway).
Best Feeling-Inducer: Which scene or death provoked the best emotional reaction from you? I really dug the scene where Gabby and Elliot-Blair consider abandoning the plan and then don't. It's a wonderful moment because their paths have led them to this point where they've sunk so much time and effort and hope into this horrible course of action, and can see that it probably won't pay off, but their care for each other and the distance they've already traveled mean they can't figure any way out other than to try to just keep muscling through. Powerful and tragic stuff.
Best Drama: Which scene or death had you on the edge of your seat in the way of conflict, suspense, or drama? I really enjoyed the conversation between Junji and Caleb. It's a great moment of tension where one party is playing with fire without realizing it, and Slam does a great job of telegraphing Junji's evolving (and worsening) mood. It also stands out for leading directly into a death despite nobody being rolled; Courtney deserves a tip of the hat for following the logic of the scene to its inevitable conclusion, and keeping it from feeling predictable at the same time.
Best Surprise: Which scene or death caught you most off guard in a pleasant way, either through its unpredictable nature or its unique execution? RJ heel turns right before his death. Swinging a character's path is a risky choice even in normal circumstances, and to go in on a player turn from a character knowing that they aren't going to really get to dwell in that space for long takes real guts. AnimeNerd took what could've been a pretty standard rematch and made it something really different due to RJ's evolution in perspective. Cool stuff.
Teams/Mentors/TV Universe
The Mason Ross Teamwork Award: Credit to NAFT for the name. Which is your favorite team this season? There are no bad teams, but I think the lack of much team pride makes it easy to forget just how stacked the Krakens were in terms of quality, interesting characters. Every single one of them was involved in something cool during their time in the game, and those who went out early in most cases left a real impression while doing so. I also enjoyed how the vast majority of them immediately dunked on, chewed out, or stated their intent to ignore their mentor, which gave them a really plucky, confrontational sort of vibe.
The This-Kill-Is-Brought-To-You-By-Verizon Award: Who is your favorite mentor from this cast? Since I'm not doubling down on Ben, I'm going to give some love to Stephanie of the Buccaneers for consistently innovating and offering an unexpectedly and quietly involved personal arc. Stephanie's interesting in that her own path through the game was complicated, as is her current relationship with it, and yet at the same time she became more personally invested than many of the others, even sabotaging one of her own as retribution for a betrayal.
I also need to, of course, offer a nod to the best, most competent mentor on the cast, who was horribly cheated with a time in the spotlight cut unjustly short preemptively.
"You're My Favorite Jellyfish!" What is your favorite use or subversion of team/mentor mechanics or relationships this season? Rattle, question namesake, takes it again with everything about the dynamic between Anthony and Ben but extra especially this thread where the relationship finally disintegrates. The sheer frustration and incoherent ire displayed by Ben is an amazing piece of character work, and while we've seen a number of students turn on their teams this version, none have made it so personal as Anthony. It's a thread highlight for me full stop, and the only reason it wasn't shortlisted for my favorite of the version was I knew I was going to be talking about it here.
Making The Dream Work: Which team are you rooting for to find success? This was a tie between the Selkies and the Leviathans, but I gave it to the Selkies last time, so...
One of the things I appreciate about the remaining Leviathans is that they've both traced unconventional paths through the game, suffering hardships distinct from the more common fights and deaths of friends (though there's been some of that too). Now, at the final stage, they've found themselves in a real alliance despite not actually liking each other much at all in other contexts, which is a great feature of the team system and gives them a certain dysfunctional underdog appeal.
They're ALL Terrible People? Which team has thoroughly earned its inevitable downfall? This stretches my commitment to not reusing these, considering I'm literally proposing renaming this category in honor of the Crabs, but I suppose I'll also give a shout-out to the Sirens, While a decent number of them had good intentions, they also include a number of very high-profile villains, and even the more lowkey tended to be either proactively seeking trouble of somewhat disconcerting in some manner or other. Well, except poor Caleb, who comparatively did nothing wrong. Unless you ask Junji, of course...
The Universe Next Door... If you could move one character to another team, who would it be and where would they go? I think, given how their respective arcs went, that it would've been fascinating to have Amy Barrows-Shaw as a member of the Buccaneers (much as I loved having her on my team, and believe me, I did). Amy was a character whose path was heavily shaped by her interactions with the team concept, and this left her unable to trust her friends, causing her to murder one and then perish to retribution from her teammate. In a world where Amy is on the same team as Kaya and Bethan, I think things could've swung in a much less dark direction, and while still being a volatile situation full of potential conflict.
The Scarlet Panther Award For Cooperation Which team's dynamic and interactions with their assigned allies have you enjoyed the most? I'm going to pick the Mariners on part because this team had a distinct lack of successful team dynamic. It was oddly common for Mariners to jump to other groups for safety, and one of the best quiet team-based plotlines was Gabby picking off other Mariners in an effort to send Elliot-Blair home with the ten... something which ultimately ended with him the last of the team standing and no early release in sight.
Put Me In, Coach! Which team would you want to be on if you were in TV? Since I'm passing on repeats, I'm going to go with the Selkies, because they had good teamwork (except when it came to dealing with deserters) and they have a mentor who genuinely is invested in their survival, albeit not always in a good personal spot to contribute a ton towards it.
Best COTD Tangent: What's been your favorite piece of work from the in-character TV fan forum? This is the one exception I'm cutting myself re: doubling up. Long live Kyoko Sakura-Chan! Everything's been tons of fun on COTD and there are so many wonderful things, but nothing can challenge the sheer joy of these incredible MS Paint masterpieces that have left a permanent mark on site culture that even goes beyond TV.
Best Social Media Drama: What TV-related social media musings have most positively caught your attention?
Elliot doesn't come online that often, but he's one of my favorite TV lore personalities just for the vibes he brings. I also love Noreen teasing the Burton Harris maneuver, just for the memes. Really, though, everyone who's been active has again put in some great work.
Predictions, Preferences, and Positions
If you could change ANYTHING that has happened thus far, what would you change? Aside from wishing characters hadn't gone inactive, my big one is actually that I wish the rolls had come down on the escape brigade in a slightly less brutal way. I super love Luanne and think her solo breakout is amazing, but I feel like there were several moments where larger groups were poised on the edge of making some progress only to be thrown off course by rolls hitting one character and then another the next set, and it would've been really cool to see some of the other amazing kids involved in the plot get more of a chance to make it further too.
There are ten remaining characters. Which character/team are you counting on to be the last one standing in TV3? So, while I have preferences, they're pretty slight and change on a dime. I think TV3 has a super strong cast on the whole, and while it's exciting to have a team win actually possible, I also think the kids left can pull their own weight for solo focus as well if that's how the cookie crumbles. I think we're in for something really cool whoever takes it.
How do you predict the ending of TV3 is going to turn out? I think it'll be a blast with a bunch of cool stuff happening just due to the great cast we have left, IC and OOC. This has been one of the most consistently active, creative, high energy versions, and I think all of those things are going to carry through.
How much did you enjoy/not enjoy TV3? TV3 is some of the most fun I've had, and a lot of that's down to the really positive, supportive atmosphere throughout. Watching all of chat turn out to celebrate Seo-yun and Luanne is a great snapshot of what's been so nice about it. I also enjoy how ambitious everyone's been while still being open to compromise and willing to try new things.
What do you like the most about TV3? Far and away the best thing about TV3 for me has been a highly invested, highly positive community and atmosphere surrounding it. Handlers have been very willing to engage with each other's works, celebrate each other's successes, and give each other benefit of the doubt. I've also been really happy with the warm welcome some newer members have received; it's not every version where the entry point is really smooth, and I'm proud of the community for treating folks well.
What do you think could have been better about the version? A small thing, but I think there are a few opportunities we had to get even a little more wild with stuff that would've been fun. Things like getting nervous about the cannon on the clipper ship being functional and so on weren't exactly bad stances to have, but the community has mostly been really responsible and keyed to fun this version and has taught a lot about extending the benefit of the doubt, and in hindsight I would bring that in wherever possible.
What do you think of the overall TV story/world? The overall TV world/story is my favorite in the SOTF family for a pretty simple reason: it's dynamic and collaborative in a way that speaks to me a lot. While it wasn't intentionally built this way, it ended up the setting where handlers can put their own spin on stuff and add little details/play around in the world in a way that engages with the game more than what's possible in other versions (due to its status as pop culture phenomenon) and at the same time the various lore seasons bring handler-created work into play and spread a teeny slice of the winner experience. And, of course, whatever happens in one version can ripple into the next in a way the other games don't quite do.
What are your hopes for the future of TV, both the smaller games and the eventual TV4? Basically the stuff we're doing. The smaller seasons are an experiment, but one that I hope will help make the games faster and more accessible without taking the luster away from the periodic big event versions. I just want to keep the good vibes going and have a bunch more fun games that play with other angles offered by TV.
How do you feel about TV3 compared to TV1 and 2? TV3 is pretty cleanly the favorite for me. TV1 laid the path for a lot of what Mini's about, and has pretty strong V1 vibes overall... but part of that includes having pretty inconsistent quality in some areas and wildly different levels of effort/engagement going on. TV2 has some really high highlights, but also cheerfully made a lot of the mistakes TV1 made on accident but this time on purpose. It also had probably the most strained OOC environment we've had on Mini, for a range of reasons. TV3 brings good vibes, a very high average to go along with the high peaks, and a much fuller understanding of the universe.
How do you feel about TV3 compared to other non-TV games? It's some of the most fun I've had overall, and that's really down to the good environment, willingness to try new things, and support—especially for newer handlers just getting into everything. It was also very satisfying to see some of the things we tried as experiments pay off.
Talk About Yourself
What has been your favorite thing to write in TV3? I half hate putting a one-shot here, but the saga of Mandy spending an actual day locked in a bathroom was some of the most fun I've had in a while, and I want to give a big shout-out to Brackie for enabling it.
Which of your TV3 characters was your favorite to write? In terms of PCs, Mandy wins because her specific vibe lets me hit a lot of beats I personally am amused by. Overall, though doing the mentor thing is a ton of fun because it allows me to interact with a whole bunch of characters and stories in a really different sort of way.
What are you proudest of in TV3? One of my big goals in TV3 was to write characters who fall into more of a supportive role, as opposed to my very center-stagey characters from TV1 and 2. I went in consciously planning to try to use them to help other folks shine, while hopefully still having enough interesting stuff going on on their own to be fun to read. I generally feel pretty good about how that worked out, and it's always nice to have intent pay off like that.
What do you wish you could improve? It definitely took me a little to really get in gear with the version, and I think a better, more invested Sandbox showing would've been nice. Also, by virtue of being attached to characters who did a bunch of kill scenes, I ended up in way more private threads than I like to, and I think that in many cases the best beats I got were from venturing outside those private threads (the assault on the banquet hall being a great example of this—it was a massive public mess, but I think a highlight for a bunch of characters). I want to remind folks that private threads aren't the only option, even for deaths, and try to walk us back as whole/prod my groups to be less particular.
What is your favorite TV3 memory? Anytime everyone got super hyped for something. The start of the version, Seo-yun and Luanne, the F10 stuff. Also those Kyoko streams I actually managed to catch.
What else would you like to share? Anything goes! These were compiled from a thread I filled out roughly 18 months ago. I was too lazy to smush them together right away, then I forgot, then I finally got reminded. I initially intended to do some editing, but it has been exceedingly minimal as that would make it take even longer to happen. Perfect can be the enemy of good and such.