(Original post by Kermit)
Ian Hargrave is fat!
'The first things someone loooking at Ian would notice are him being massively overweight"
Ian Hargrave is fat!
Ian Hargrave was sad because he's fat and then Slayer Baseball boy #5 is like "join baseball" and ian is hapi! : )
"His weight has earned him the somewhat joking nickname of "Meat" among his teammates (though they're the only people he'll allow to call him that)."
Ian Hargrave is fat! Ian Hargrave is fat! Ian Hargrave is adopted by Kaishi!
"Ian Hargrave, baseball player and fat kid(...)"
Like ok, I get it. He's fat. At least he had other character traits in his profile like his self-doubt and sadness. I feel like if Slayer'd held onto him maybe Ian wouldn'tve ended up being FAT!fodder, but alas it wasn't to be. Characters that are fat and sad and riddled with self-doubt are the best characters [WINKING INTENSIFIES], but hey, sometimes you just need a fodder kid.
Ian is walking along a path and then he thinks about how he'll never be able to do anything ever again and he gets sad and cries. (wow just like someone else WINKINGWINKINGWINKING)
Peri comes along so rip Ian, and the Peri just shoots Ian i guess. Italian!SlayerMurderbot is here too even though he doesn't have much relevance upon the scene. Ian gets hit in the shoulder by the boolet, so he falls over and pretends to be dead. also he thinks about killing peri while his back is turned which is kinda jarring and like "ian no not u too".
Peri's like "no ur not dead" and shoots Ian in the spine this time, while saying "Wakey Wakey Eggs and Bacey" which is like heck peri calm down jeez louise guy. Peri's a dick and Ian's like "INTERNAL SCREAMING" and then Peri cuts Ian's head off while saying "You are lucky.God loves fat kids".
peri y u gotta be so rUuuUude? dont u know hes human toOooOo?
Ian dies because he got decapitated but not before Kaishi throws a flashback about how he was doomed from the start because IanIsFat and like
y'know as a reader I do have a memory of longer than 30 seconds. You don't need to state that IAN IS FAT and IAN IS DOOMED over and over again, because we the reader already know that from the first time you said it.
"Ian "Meat" Hargrave was exactly like his shell on the outside. A big, fat cowardly loser doomed from the start."
sighs
CONCLUSION: Ian had potential to be like, not fodder. If this writeup were just based off of his profile, I'd say he could've actually been a fairly complex character, y'know being all sad and stuff but then trying to prove himself and maybe also meeting up with his baseball buddies. Instead he was SAD and FAT and DOOMED and randomly thinking about murdering people and getting fed to Peri, so it's like "well ok then", leaving like no impact upon the reader. Oh well.
The V1 Read-A-Thon
Discuss anything and everything that has to do with SOTF here -- from your favorite character to comments and suggestions about the site! This forum also contains roleplaying guides for your benefit!
(Original post by Cactus)
So here we go. Edward Rommel. Stream of consciousness time, which means - yeah, it's gonna be long.
Conclusion:
Do I recommend Edward? Kind of. I've gone back and forth on it.
Is he Z's best work as a writer? No. He's a short character, and a lot of his journey is twisted around by weird posting orders and some people who probably weren't as active as they should have been. He's a sweet boy, and none of his pre-written player stuff comes into play, but he doesn't get the same level of characterization or story as any of riser's longer-lived characters, probably because of bad luck in threads he was in. There's also the issue of the characterization of his autism, which is problematic because of what we know today, in 2017. It doesn't hold up, but that's a product of the times, so we need to remember that.
Why I do ultimately recommend him is in service of the characters that he meets along the way. Jacob Starr, Garrett Langston, Adam Dodd, Hawley Faust - even Aiden Ambrose and Daisuke Ando are characters that are worth a read and Edward is surrounded by them at pretty much every turn. You get kind of a secondary look at a lot of the bigger early characters during his story, and you even get to see a bit of Uriel Hunter, who I will always have a soft spot for, and the first in-joke in SOTF site history happens in a thread that Edward literally is in the midst of leaving (Minase and his death from autoimmune disorder).
By himself, I don't know if he's super compelling, but he reacts appropriately to all of the stuff going on around him, and I sort of wish that he'd been around a little longer so riser could have delved into some of the perks of his bio. But you have to remember at this point in 2005, the site wasn't very big, and there weren't a huge number of characters to follow at the beginning of the game like there would be in games today.
So yeah, give him a read. He's reflective of early SOTF site culture and writing, even if he wasn't his author's best effort, he can act as a gateway of sorts. Almost every character he interacts with is worth reading, and his stuff with Garrett is nice, if not really short. Would have been nice to see those two continue on.
I'd take another, if there's one to take.
So here we go. Edward Rommel. Stream of consciousness time, which means - yeah, it's gonna be long.
Spoiler!
Bio:
This is a Riserugu profile, so while I think it'd probably need fleshing out by today's standards, it's pretty good and hits on all of the major points of what someone looks like. The one blind eye is interesting. I don't recall it coming up in play at all, but maybe I'm wrong. We'll totally find out, I guess.
I am embarrassed to say that I wondered why people sometimes called him "Rommel" versus Edward, and now I know. It's the first line of his fucking bio. I guess since it didn't have the words "Adam Dodd" in it, I just didn't pay attention. Or I was too smitten with Hawley Faust. Who knows. Rommel falls into the very v1-3ish trope of being from somewhere else - in this case, it's Germany. This makes sense - Riser was European and often would write contextual characters based on traits of real people she knew, and since they were often VERY European and talked like Europeans, it all added up.
I really like the character, outside of the whole "if he doesn't take his medicine he turns into a different person" sentence, which... kind of gives him the whole "potential to go insane and turn into a killer" thing, which I honestly don't love. Yes, I know. Hi Kettle Rommel, I'm Pot Doddpool. But still.
One interesting note on the autism in the bio: I'm no medical professional, and I'm aware of the fact that this bio was in fact written by someone who I believe at the time was training to be a medical professional, so I like that it's there, though it's a little out-dated now because I believe as a condition it's understood a lot more. The under-sensitivity reads a bit as laying groundwork for potential playing, along with the medication, so I wonder if maybe he'll play.
Game:
Aaand the first thread is... "Starting Point for Boy #77". Dammit. Not Dodd. Why did it have to be Dodd.
I'll be honest. I was lying above. I knew what happens. I WAS THERE.
Anywho.
Rommel begins his journey wandering into a scene between a not-yet-monologuey Adam Dodd and Alan "Shoulda pushed him off the cliff" Shinwrath. He's clumsy, and falls out in front of them, yard-saleing his bag all over the area. Adam is too busy minding Alan's brass knuckles as he shakes his hand to solidify their pact (bet that goes well for him), but Alan turns and basically betrays his android self by wondering if he should help the poor boy.
I'll probably riff on Slayer a bit, because V1 problems and all, but I really like that he refers to him as Rommel - establishing that the characters probably have interacted and maybe are friendly. He's not on the Buscemi-Shinwrath kill list so that's good. Adam is of course like "of course we should you fool" and wanders over, calling him Edward and making me reach back twelve years to smack myself for not reading his bio.
And then in like, two posts Edward realizes that he knows Adam, but has no idea who Alan is. So much for that idea, I guess. Allusion is made to the fact that he can't see him with his bum eye, but it's not touched on again. Edward refuses Adam's help while Alan is fantasizing about killing Adam (lovely) and taking down notes on danger zones. Adam suggests a team-up (another big ol' surprise), but Rommel turns him down, claiming that he was looking for someone. I honestly can't remember if he ever found who he was looking for, so this should be interesting to follow. He leaves Dodd and Lore behind before anyone realizes that Mr. Data is knocked out in his quarters and Lore's going to feed Dodd to the crystalline entity. Good call, Rommel.
We next go to the waterfall, where Edward has gotten himself lost following a river and he stumbles upon the trio of Daisuke Ando, Aiden Ambrose and Umi Martin. I'm not sure that I had a lot of interaction with these three, but they were a pretty prominent early-game grouping that I didn't cross paths with much with any of my characters (that I remember) so this should be neat to read.
Edward manages to fail spectacularly at hiding and the three order him out from behind the tree at gunpoint. He laments his luck, and - oh look, there's the medicine thing that comes up again. Hmmm. Seeds were planted. He manages to ingratiate himself within the group, and everything seems gravy. I like the detail that he knows Umi, and she recognizes him but doesn't know his name. They continue to chum around, but oh - here comes Minase!
Wait.
Is this the thread where he dies of AIDS? Please tell me it is. I guess we'll see.
Minase holds everyone at gunpoint, trying to get their weapons away from them. He seems like an asshole, and when Edward tries to reason with him, he shuts that shit down hard. He's heard about him from Hawley... aha! Is this who he's looking for? Evidently not, because he remembers Hawley being sour and makes a note to try and find him later. Anyhow, Minase is playing, because killing your friends is easy and all back in the v1 era, and I look at the time-stamp and realize that I just read something that I wrote back in 2005 a thread ago and immediately feel old. After I stop feeling old (spoiler: I do not), I note that he muses he should have stayed with Dodd and Brother Cavil. History disagrees with him, as Dodd friends and travelling companions don't tend to live very long. You made the right choice, Rommel.
Minase continues menacing the group to give them their guns, making a
Aiden, Umi, and Dai are all like "yeah bro, we have three guns, so go eat a dick" and Umi takes a shot at him. We get a little ooc note stating that Minase is down to have a shootout because the rp has "lacked any serious action" and I'm thinking he should have jumped in a Slayer thread instead if that's his gripe. Anyhow, he apparently goes insane suddenly after his adrenaline goes off, and things are degenerating quickly. Daisuke grabs a second gun and he immediately crumbles like a sandcastle at tide. Ohhh, v1.
The tables turned on them, Edward retrieves his dropped pepper spray, and they're at a bit of a stand-off, when lo and behold, here comes Garrett Langston, who's apparently been fucked up pretty good, so he just kind of stumbles in and realizes that this isn't a party he wants to be at. Edward takes a chance and goes to help Garrett, because the dude is mangled pretty good, and if there's a common thread amongst Riser's characters - most of them are nurturers at heart. Garrett is totally down and even tosses away his weapon, because like, stab wounds aren't fun and he'd love some help.
He has a great little line that I really, really love:
Side note: four posts later, Minase dies of AIDS. EDWARD YOU MISSED IT. Anywho.
We join Edward and Garrett at the River, back when it was pristine and hadn't seen wanton mayhem. Just wait, River. Just wait. While Edward patches up Garrett, the two boys bond over their mutual love of music, and like most non-player types in the early days of SOTF, they got the Mimura route and suggest getting a group together and finding their way off the island. Edward is skeptical, which again - I like the reaction from him. He's supposed to be autistic and socially awkward, and it comes off well in his reactions. He mutters a lot of his replies and you do get the feeling that Garrett is far more of a social beast than Edward. I like this contrast, so I'm digging this pairing.
As Edward tends to his new friend's wounds, we get a super random URIEL HUNTER CAMEO. My favourite v1 oddity character proves that he has great cardio while he searches for Jacob Starr. Uriel and his super religious witch hunter brain gets frightened at the prospect of two boys touching one another, so he keeps on running as fast as he could from the horror.
Oh, Uriel. Honey... no. (2005ing intensifies)
We then get what I can only assume is a retroactive thread link, as Garrett manages to leave the thread as Edward is cleaning his wounds. Ignoring that bit of housecleaning nonsense, Jacob arrives back in the River with Uriel in tow, and decides that in lieu of saying hello, he'd speak with bullets. For what it's worth - he fired only once, and aimed at his head, so it's a pretty reasonable miss.
But miss it doesn't! Edward takes the bullet across the cheek - which 2017 Adam actually really dislikes as a narrative trope, even though me, Riser, Slayer, and probably everyone else on the site did it at one point or another to avoid being a dick and having the other characters miss in a fight. Bullets rarely do that. They miss, or they don't. Edward has the flight response of his fight-or-flight in high gear, but before Garrett can say or do anything, HERE COMES URIELLLLLLL, and it's raining molotov cocktails! As Uriel practices some aggressive groundskeeping, Jacob continues firing bullets, this time he aims at Rommel. With his luck, I'd imagine he hits Garrett?
He doesn't, though - Edward takes another bullet, this time in the shin, and again 2017 Adam can't help but wonder how he's able to walk. I bashed my shin against my coffee table last night and crumpled to the ground like I'd been shot. 2005 Adam reaches back through time and slaps me, and again I remember that this is v1, and much like the Matrix, the rules don't necessarily apply here. Edward grabs Garrett and they run to the Bamboo Coppice.
... this is starting to sound familiar again. I wonder if I know anyone in the next scene.
Edward and Garrett run into the scene, Edward again tripping over his own feet (heh) and falling over in front of Hawley Faust. I am more than happy at the appearance of Hawley Faust. He's heard about Hawley's kill count, so he's naturally a little skeptical, but sees his travelling companions and relaxes a little.
Alan (who gets a name now and not that of a fictional robot because he's acting like a real person) this time helps Edward up and asks him who's after him. He doesn't have much time to respond until Jacob Starr joins the fray. As it turns out, Hawley and co have already had a run-in or two with Jacob, who looks around at them all and immediately opens up on Hawley.
So this scene is degenerating into bullets, and as it does, Venka Rapler wakes up amongst the bamboo, and runs into the battle, screaming at everyone to stop shooting at one another. Cool, I bet that's gonna go real well for you, Venka.
The case for a future posting order rears its ugly head once again as we get a bit of rapid-fire between Slayer and Riser - which I get, considering they're both controlling two characters in the scene, leaving Uriel, Garrett and some other guy as window-dressing for the time being. Gunfire and crossbow bolts are exchanged and Edward takes a bullet or two, and tries to push Venka down and out of the line of fire. Hawley takes a bullet here too, and he does so while he's firing, so his aim gets put off and he ends up opening up Venka's throat, killing her pretty quickly.
Nice going, Hawley.
Realizing what just happened, and kind of rattled by watching someone die, Edward suggests to the plant in the corner (who looks an awful lot like Garrett) that they make their exit.
Oh my god, it's Adam Dodd! I almost used that as a campaign slogan running for president of student council in high school. SHOCKINGLY, I didn't win. Apparently Adam went wandering in the bamboo, and I muse that even as a thirty-one year-old man, he's probably right. I like exploring cornfields and mazes and shit. I'd NEVER survive a horror movie. Anyhow, while reading Dodd I totally wonder if his line "He went away for ten minutes - and what happens?" is a commentary on the shit that all went down so quickly with the rapid-fire posts. Someone should ask him.
Back at the fight, Jacob just snipes one of Uriel's molotovs (hmm, not sure if that's kosher) and chucks it at the group. Meanwhile, Alan's making a charge at Jacob. Hawley decides that he's had enough of Jacob's shit, and he retreats, pausing to tell Adam that he might want to peace out, too. All the while, Alan has decided to bring brass knuckles to a gun-fight, and Data deactivates Lore for trying to sick the Borg on Captain Picard, Counselor Troi and Geordi. That's all she wrote for Lore!Alan.
I get really confused here, because apparently Hawley is not gone, as him and Adam are still around and reacting to Alan's dead body. Adam's rattled, and he realizes that as Hawley is scared too, he's not the crazy psycho that people have been taking for him, he's just scared, and that's fine too. But this is an Edward write-up, so we'll move on. It's been 12 years and I still love Hawley Faust as a character, so much that he's hijacking my write-up. Aaaanyways. I'm looking for Edward, and I find him again.
Garrett finally joins the party, and he's apparently been unconscious on his feet (impressive), but Edward pops up enough to be all "woods!" and they saunter on their merry way to the woods.
So we arrive at said woods, and yuh-oh, it looks like Edward's been rocking some internal bleeding on the way here. That's not ideal. He realizes that his under-sensitivity has blinded him to the fact that he's got a bullet in his chest. I like that Garrett is still barely able to stand while he's more than happy to offer his support to Edward. They both quickly realize that the poor guy is a goner.
Edward tells him to go find Adam and Hawley (which I don't recall ever happening, but I think he ends up finding better friends, so that works too), and gives Garrett his jacket, to try and get it home to his parents. Garrett is sad, and so is Edward, who thinks of the last time that he saw his parents. He thanks Garrett for being a friend, but before he can get the words out, he dies.
And so ends the story of Edward Rommel.
This is a Riserugu profile, so while I think it'd probably need fleshing out by today's standards, it's pretty good and hits on all of the major points of what someone looks like. The one blind eye is interesting. I don't recall it coming up in play at all, but maybe I'm wrong. We'll totally find out, I guess.
I am embarrassed to say that I wondered why people sometimes called him "Rommel" versus Edward, and now I know. It's the first line of his fucking bio. I guess since it didn't have the words "Adam Dodd" in it, I just didn't pay attention. Or I was too smitten with Hawley Faust. Who knows. Rommel falls into the very v1-3ish trope of being from somewhere else - in this case, it's Germany. This makes sense - Riser was European and often would write contextual characters based on traits of real people she knew, and since they were often VERY European and talked like Europeans, it all added up.
I really like the character, outside of the whole "if he doesn't take his medicine he turns into a different person" sentence, which... kind of gives him the whole "potential to go insane and turn into a killer" thing, which I honestly don't love. Yes, I know. Hi Kettle Rommel, I'm Pot Doddpool. But still.
One interesting note on the autism in the bio: I'm no medical professional, and I'm aware of the fact that this bio was in fact written by someone who I believe at the time was training to be a medical professional, so I like that it's there, though it's a little out-dated now because I believe as a condition it's understood a lot more. The under-sensitivity reads a bit as laying groundwork for potential playing, along with the medication, so I wonder if maybe he'll play.
Game:
Aaand the first thread is... "Starting Point for Boy #77". Dammit. Not Dodd. Why did it have to be Dodd.
I'll be honest. I was lying above. I knew what happens. I WAS THERE.
Anywho.
Rommel begins his journey wandering into a scene between a not-yet-monologuey Adam Dodd and Alan "Shoulda pushed him off the cliff" Shinwrath. He's clumsy, and falls out in front of them, yard-saleing his bag all over the area. Adam is too busy minding Alan's brass knuckles as he shakes his hand to solidify their pact (bet that goes well for him), but Alan turns and basically betrays his android self by wondering if he should help the poor boy.
I'll probably riff on Slayer a bit, because V1 problems and all, but I really like that he refers to him as Rommel - establishing that the characters probably have interacted and maybe are friendly. He's not on the Buscemi-Shinwrath kill list so that's good. Adam is of course like "of course we should you fool" and wanders over, calling him Edward and making me reach back twelve years to smack myself for not reading his bio.
And then in like, two posts Edward realizes that he knows Adam, but has no idea who Alan is. So much for that idea, I guess. Allusion is made to the fact that he can't see him with his bum eye, but it's not touched on again. Edward refuses Adam's help while Alan is fantasizing about killing Adam (lovely) and taking down notes on danger zones. Adam suggests a team-up (another big ol' surprise), but Rommel turns him down, claiming that he was looking for someone. I honestly can't remember if he ever found who he was looking for, so this should be interesting to follow. He leaves Dodd and Lore behind before anyone realizes that Mr. Data is knocked out in his quarters and Lore's going to feed Dodd to the crystalline entity. Good call, Rommel.
We next go to the waterfall, where Edward has gotten himself lost following a river and he stumbles upon the trio of Daisuke Ando, Aiden Ambrose and Umi Martin. I'm not sure that I had a lot of interaction with these three, but they were a pretty prominent early-game grouping that I didn't cross paths with much with any of my characters (that I remember) so this should be neat to read.
Edward manages to fail spectacularly at hiding and the three order him out from behind the tree at gunpoint. He laments his luck, and - oh look, there's the medicine thing that comes up again. Hmmm. Seeds were planted. He manages to ingratiate himself within the group, and everything seems gravy. I like the detail that he knows Umi, and she recognizes him but doesn't know his name. They continue to chum around, but oh - here comes Minase!
Wait.
Is this the thread where he dies of AIDS? Please tell me it is. I guess we'll see.
Minase holds everyone at gunpoint, trying to get their weapons away from them. He seems like an asshole, and when Edward tries to reason with him, he shuts that shit down hard. He's heard about him from Hawley... aha! Is this who he's looking for? Evidently not, because he remembers Hawley being sour and makes a note to try and find him later. Anyhow, Minase is playing, because killing your friends is easy and all back in the v1 era, and I look at the time-stamp and realize that I just read something that I wrote back in 2005 a thread ago and immediately feel old. After I stop feeling old (spoiler: I do not), I note that he muses he should have stayed with Dodd and Brother Cavil. History disagrees with him, as Dodd friends and travelling companions don't tend to live very long. You made the right choice, Rommel.
Minase continues menacing the group to give them their guns, making a
I don't know what this means, so I try and make faces at myself in the selfie view of my phone's camera. Beats me. I give up and go back to reading."(...) scowl remianed all the time giving him a twisted look, like a mad man having his balls twisted whilst watching Bin Laden presenting roundabout."
Aiden, Umi, and Dai are all like "yeah bro, we have three guns, so go eat a dick" and Umi takes a shot at him. We get a little ooc note stating that Minase is down to have a shootout because the rp has "lacked any serious action" and I'm thinking he should have jumped in a Slayer thread instead if that's his gripe. Anyhow, he apparently goes insane suddenly after his adrenaline goes off, and things are degenerating quickly. Daisuke grabs a second gun and he immediately crumbles like a sandcastle at tide. Ohhh, v1.
The tables turned on them, Edward retrieves his dropped pepper spray, and they're at a bit of a stand-off, when lo and behold, here comes Garrett Langston, who's apparently been fucked up pretty good, so he just kind of stumbles in and realizes that this isn't a party he wants to be at. Edward takes a chance and goes to help Garrett, because the dude is mangled pretty good, and if there's a common thread amongst Riser's characters - most of them are nurturers at heart. Garrett is totally down and even tosses away his weapon, because like, stab wounds aren't fun and he'd love some help.
He has a great little line that I really, really love:
This is nice and all, but there's the whole issue that Minase, Daisuke and Umi are all in Mexican standoff mode - this is a v1-ism where posting order would have helped this immensely. Quipping that he's not likely to harm anyone armed with pepper spray and jelly beans, Edward realizes that that this situation was likely to degenerate. Wanting to help Garrett, Edward takes him and they leave the thread, moving on to the River."Im one of those kids who always has an answer for everyone. Just ask Garrett, he'll help you out." He gave the boy a desperate look
"I have no answer for this."
Side note: four posts later, Minase dies of AIDS. EDWARD YOU MISSED IT. Anywho.
We join Edward and Garrett at the River, back when it was pristine and hadn't seen wanton mayhem. Just wait, River. Just wait. While Edward patches up Garrett, the two boys bond over their mutual love of music, and like most non-player types in the early days of SOTF, they got the Mimura route and suggest getting a group together and finding their way off the island. Edward is skeptical, which again - I like the reaction from him. He's supposed to be autistic and socially awkward, and it comes off well in his reactions. He mutters a lot of his replies and you do get the feeling that Garrett is far more of a social beast than Edward. I like this contrast, so I'm digging this pairing.
As Edward tends to his new friend's wounds, we get a super random URIEL HUNTER CAMEO. My favourite v1 oddity character proves that he has great cardio while he searches for Jacob Starr. Uriel and his super religious witch hunter brain gets frightened at the prospect of two boys touching one another, so he keeps on running as fast as he could from the horror.
Oh, Uriel. Honey... no. (2005ing intensifies)
We then get what I can only assume is a retroactive thread link, as Garrett manages to leave the thread as Edward is cleaning his wounds. Ignoring that bit of housecleaning nonsense, Jacob arrives back in the River with Uriel in tow, and decides that in lieu of saying hello, he'd speak with bullets. For what it's worth - he fired only once, and aimed at his head, so it's a pretty reasonable miss.
But miss it doesn't! Edward takes the bullet across the cheek - which 2017 Adam actually really dislikes as a narrative trope, even though me, Riser, Slayer, and probably everyone else on the site did it at one point or another to avoid being a dick and having the other characters miss in a fight. Bullets rarely do that. They miss, or they don't. Edward has the flight response of his fight-or-flight in high gear, but before Garrett can say or do anything, HERE COMES URIELLLLLLL, and it's raining molotov cocktails! As Uriel practices some aggressive groundskeeping, Jacob continues firing bullets, this time he aims at Rommel. With his luck, I'd imagine he hits Garrett?
He doesn't, though - Edward takes another bullet, this time in the shin, and again 2017 Adam can't help but wonder how he's able to walk. I bashed my shin against my coffee table last night and crumpled to the ground like I'd been shot. 2005 Adam reaches back through time and slaps me, and again I remember that this is v1, and much like the Matrix, the rules don't necessarily apply here. Edward grabs Garrett and they run to the Bamboo Coppice.
... this is starting to sound familiar again. I wonder if I know anyone in the next scene.
Edward and Garrett run into the scene, Edward again tripping over his own feet (heh) and falling over in front of Hawley Faust. I am more than happy at the appearance of Hawley Faust. He's heard about Hawley's kill count, so he's naturally a little skeptical, but sees his travelling companions and relaxes a little.
Alan (who gets a name now and not that of a fictional robot because he's acting like a real person) this time helps Edward up and asks him who's after him. He doesn't have much time to respond until Jacob Starr joins the fray. As it turns out, Hawley and co have already had a run-in or two with Jacob, who looks around at them all and immediately opens up on Hawley.
So this scene is degenerating into bullets, and as it does, Venka Rapler wakes up amongst the bamboo, and runs into the battle, screaming at everyone to stop shooting at one another. Cool, I bet that's gonna go real well for you, Venka.
The case for a future posting order rears its ugly head once again as we get a bit of rapid-fire between Slayer and Riser - which I get, considering they're both controlling two characters in the scene, leaving Uriel, Garrett and some other guy as window-dressing for the time being. Gunfire and crossbow bolts are exchanged and Edward takes a bullet or two, and tries to push Venka down and out of the line of fire. Hawley takes a bullet here too, and he does so while he's firing, so his aim gets put off and he ends up opening up Venka's throat, killing her pretty quickly.
Nice going, Hawley.
Realizing what just happened, and kind of rattled by watching someone die, Edward suggests to the plant in the corner (who looks an awful lot like Garrett) that they make their exit.
Oh my god, it's Adam Dodd! I almost used that as a campaign slogan running for president of student council in high school. SHOCKINGLY, I didn't win. Apparently Adam went wandering in the bamboo, and I muse that even as a thirty-one year-old man, he's probably right. I like exploring cornfields and mazes and shit. I'd NEVER survive a horror movie. Anyhow, while reading Dodd I totally wonder if his line "He went away for ten minutes - and what happens?" is a commentary on the shit that all went down so quickly with the rapid-fire posts. Someone should ask him.
Back at the fight, Jacob just snipes one of Uriel's molotovs (hmm, not sure if that's kosher) and chucks it at the group. Meanwhile, Alan's making a charge at Jacob. Hawley decides that he's had enough of Jacob's shit, and he retreats, pausing to tell Adam that he might want to peace out, too. All the while, Alan has decided to bring brass knuckles to a gun-fight, and Data deactivates Lore for trying to sick the Borg on Captain Picard, Counselor Troi and Geordi. That's all she wrote for Lore!Alan.
I get really confused here, because apparently Hawley is not gone, as him and Adam are still around and reacting to Alan's dead body. Adam's rattled, and he realizes that as Hawley is scared too, he's not the crazy psycho that people have been taking for him, he's just scared, and that's fine too. But this is an Edward write-up, so we'll move on. It's been 12 years and I still love Hawley Faust as a character, so much that he's hijacking my write-up. Aaaanyways. I'm looking for Edward, and I find him again.
Garrett finally joins the party, and he's apparently been unconscious on his feet (impressive), but Edward pops up enough to be all "woods!" and they saunter on their merry way to the woods.
So we arrive at said woods, and yuh-oh, it looks like Edward's been rocking some internal bleeding on the way here. That's not ideal. He realizes that his under-sensitivity has blinded him to the fact that he's got a bullet in his chest. I like that Garrett is still barely able to stand while he's more than happy to offer his support to Edward. They both quickly realize that the poor guy is a goner.
Edward tells him to go find Adam and Hawley (which I don't recall ever happening, but I think he ends up finding better friends, so that works too), and gives Garrett his jacket, to try and get it home to his parents. Garrett is sad, and so is Edward, who thinks of the last time that he saw his parents. He thanks Garrett for being a friend, but before he can get the words out, he dies.
And so ends the story of Edward Rommel.
Conclusion:
Do I recommend Edward? Kind of. I've gone back and forth on it.
Is he Z's best work as a writer? No. He's a short character, and a lot of his journey is twisted around by weird posting orders and some people who probably weren't as active as they should have been. He's a sweet boy, and none of his pre-written player stuff comes into play, but he doesn't get the same level of characterization or story as any of riser's longer-lived characters, probably because of bad luck in threads he was in. There's also the issue of the characterization of his autism, which is problematic because of what we know today, in 2017. It doesn't hold up, but that's a product of the times, so we need to remember that.
Why I do ultimately recommend him is in service of the characters that he meets along the way. Jacob Starr, Garrett Langston, Adam Dodd, Hawley Faust - even Aiden Ambrose and Daisuke Ando are characters that are worth a read and Edward is surrounded by them at pretty much every turn. You get kind of a secondary look at a lot of the bigger early characters during his story, and you even get to see a bit of Uriel Hunter, who I will always have a soft spot for, and the first in-joke in SOTF site history happens in a thread that Edward literally is in the midst of leaving (Minase and his death from autoimmune disorder).
By himself, I don't know if he's super compelling, but he reacts appropriately to all of the stuff going on around him, and I sort of wish that he'd been around a little longer so riser could have delved into some of the perks of his bio. But you have to remember at this point in 2005, the site wasn't very big, and there weren't a huge number of characters to follow at the beginning of the game like there would be in games today.
So yeah, give him a read. He's reflective of early SOTF site culture and writing, even if he wasn't his author's best effort, he can act as a gateway of sorts. Almost every character he interacts with is worth reading, and his stuff with Garrett is nice, if not really short. Would have been nice to see those two continue on.
I'd take another, if there's one to take.
(original post by Cactus)
Katherine Marks - a character that on first glance, I blanked on. So this will be as illuminating to y'all as it will be for me.
Conclusion:
So, Katherine Marks - how was my trip through your short but eventful life? Actually, pretty good. Kaishi was one of the strongest writers in the original v1 run, and it's clear that she knew exactly what she wanted the site to be before any of the rest of us figured it out. Katherine is a fully formed character, and while I feel that maybe her story got expedited a little bit after her battle with Jacob, I actually really enjoyed her death post and her encounter with Aaron.
There isn't much to say, outside of yeah, give Katherine a read. She's a solid, short character and I think she's well done. Hearing that Kaishi is still writing today, 12 years later doesn't surprise me at all, because you can see that the talent is definitely there from the get-go.
Katherine Marks - a character that on first glance, I blanked on. So this will be as illuminating to y'all as it will be for me.
Spoiler!
Bio:
For V1, this bio is... pretty decent. There's a lot of attention paid to what she USED to look like, versus what she looks like now, but it works and I think with a bit of fleshing out, this character would really work in today's SOTF. I was surprised, and wondered who wrote this bio - oh, look at that. Kaishi. That would explain it. Contrary to the belief of EVERYBODY, I wasn't always the longest written person on the site. Kaishi did it first, and did it really well.
Anyway, I like the tidbit about her being afraid of cats, and the story with Shaun is a neat story - I can't help but wonder if Shaun was supposed to be someone that we'd meet on the island that never came to fruition. All in all, especially for v1, I like the bio.
Game:
I had to double-check the date-stamp on the post. Aug 3, 2005, and holy crap, this is long for v1. I dig it. I generally enjoyed Kaishi's writing, so this should hopefully be a good trip.
One thing that differs from today's game is that Katherine wakes up and hasn't been around for the first few announcements. She sort of summarizes things that she's seen, and glosses over scenes that others were in that she was at the periphery of. I would later use a similar trick (to less impact) with Ryan Atwell and Dean Portman of v3. Rumour has it that Dean Portman was in fact an SOTF character, once upon a time. Either way, Kaishi does this far better than I, and is something that honestly, I'm kind of glad doesn't happen anymore (to my knowledge).
So Katherine makes her way to the small house, and investigates a discarded pack. The weapon it contains? A PLASTIC HAMMER. So we are steeped in SOTF-lore here, after all. Excellent. She muses over her situation and tries to figure out what her next move is, when she is joined by... Jacob Starr.
I literally cannot escape this guy.
Jacob's tired from all 'dat killin', and he's now sporting a trenchcoat (2005 ALERT). There's an OOC note from Kaishi about the house not having a door, but the post says "ruined doorframe", so I assume it's been edited. Katherine very hesitantly asks Jacob if he's playing the game, and Jacob replies by SHOOTING AT HER THREE TIMES. Like, I can't even. Hi Katherine, my name is BULLETS.
She takes one bullet in the arm/shoulder area, and throws the plastic hammer, which bitchslaps Jacob in the face. He shakes it off and continues firing at her, also taking out his knife, because he's feeling Murder-Death-Killy and they haven't dragged John Spartan out of the cryotube yet to stop him.
Katherine takes yet another bullet to the side, and then finds her meat hook and decides to try and make a steak out of Jacob. As he's getting slashed at, Jacob muses that it's his end goal to take down the terrorists. Uhhh, kay. He finally introduces himself, and she ends up getting stabbed in the arm as he does.
At this point, Katherine is a mess, and has pretty much been reduced to a blubbering mess, and Jacob is still unloading on her, when Cillian Crowe saunters his way into the area. He chucks a rock at Jacob's head, screams into the house, much like I would assume Gollum would, and runs away.
Cillian Crowe forever sounds like Gollum to me when he speaks and I'm not sure why.
Jacob no-sells the rock, and turns back to try and finish Katherine off. She uses a burst of adrenaline to run past him and peace out, while Kaishi uses this opportunity to chastise Slayer for pushing characters into a corner to get kills. She's correct in this, though I can't help but wonder if a PM would have sufficed. Though again, I do remember that it was super frustrating, and yeah - we had a chat back then. It was called AOL Instant Messenger, so... wouldn't be surprised if that had something to do with it. Nonetheless, he's called out fairly and gently, and Slayer gets super defensive as the thread peters out.
We join Katherine outside of the warehouse, where she plans to lure Aaron Redfield (another Slayer character) into her trap to try and get his weapon off of him. I'm... a little unsure of the decision to have her use her wiles to fall into a trap, but that's v1 for ya. The next few posts are weirdly bogged down by OOC notes, but of note, Chi Masumi runs into the area and hides behind a tree, watching Aaron and Katherine. She naturally assumes correctly that Katherine is trying to trap Aaron.
I'm weirded out by this line:
Chi wrote:
Since I don't recall this happening in SOTF OR BR. I could be wrong, but... just an odd thing to say. Kaishi then OOC establishes a posting order (AHEAD OF THE CURVE BY A FEW YEARS METHINKS) and she starts relaying her story to Aaron, crying some big ol' crocodile tears. She tells him a story about Jacob Starr, and he gets so mad that he punches the ground. Ouch. The ground is hard, dude. He immediately feels bad for her and tries to go about helping her.
Chi continues to watch, like the little voyeur she is. We find out that she banged Katherine's ex-boyfriend Shaun, which I'm okay with for the sake of the fact that she probably read the profile.
Katherine lifts up her shirt to show Aaron her brand new gunshot wound, and Aaron gets red and embarrassed, because he's pretty sure that he didn't get his cooties shot last month and I'm not sure that his folks have had the birds and the bees talk with him yet.
Aaron keeps on trying to help, while Chi realizes what she's trying to do to Aaron from afar. She then springs her trap, pointing at the tree-line and claiming to see Jacob. There is no Jacob, and Aaron is confused, Chi is happy not to have been seen, and Katherine brushes it off and starts coming onto Aaron.
Aaron suddenly starts having pain in his eye and gets distracted, and Katherine decides that it's time to make use of the meat-hook. She digs the damn thing into his spine, and he's paralyzed. She apologizes to him, claiming that she's planning on getting out of here and having a family. She gives him a compliment on his looks as she then proceeds to run the meat hook through his throat, bringing an end to Aaron Redfield's time on the island.
Chi, who's been watching this whole thing happen, finally decides that enough is enough, and jumps out, aims for Katherine's eye, and shoots her right through the eye with a slingshot. Katherine, just fresh off of proving that she knows how to kill and can survive after all, turns around and basically walks right into it - and she's dead before she even hits the floor. So much for the bright future.
For V1, this bio is... pretty decent. There's a lot of attention paid to what she USED to look like, versus what she looks like now, but it works and I think with a bit of fleshing out, this character would really work in today's SOTF. I was surprised, and wondered who wrote this bio - oh, look at that. Kaishi. That would explain it. Contrary to the belief of EVERYBODY, I wasn't always the longest written person on the site. Kaishi did it first, and did it really well.
Anyway, I like the tidbit about her being afraid of cats, and the story with Shaun is a neat story - I can't help but wonder if Shaun was supposed to be someone that we'd meet on the island that never came to fruition. All in all, especially for v1, I like the bio.
Game:
I had to double-check the date-stamp on the post. Aug 3, 2005, and holy crap, this is long for v1. I dig it. I generally enjoyed Kaishi's writing, so this should hopefully be a good trip.
One thing that differs from today's game is that Katherine wakes up and hasn't been around for the first few announcements. She sort of summarizes things that she's seen, and glosses over scenes that others were in that she was at the periphery of. I would later use a similar trick (to less impact) with Ryan Atwell and Dean Portman of v3. Rumour has it that Dean Portman was in fact an SOTF character, once upon a time. Either way, Kaishi does this far better than I, and is something that honestly, I'm kind of glad doesn't happen anymore (to my knowledge).
So Katherine makes her way to the small house, and investigates a discarded pack. The weapon it contains? A PLASTIC HAMMER. So we are steeped in SOTF-lore here, after all. Excellent. She muses over her situation and tries to figure out what her next move is, when she is joined by... Jacob Starr.
I literally cannot escape this guy.
Jacob's tired from all 'dat killin', and he's now sporting a trenchcoat (2005 ALERT). There's an OOC note from Kaishi about the house not having a door, but the post says "ruined doorframe", so I assume it's been edited. Katherine very hesitantly asks Jacob if he's playing the game, and Jacob replies by SHOOTING AT HER THREE TIMES. Like, I can't even. Hi Katherine, my name is BULLETS.
She takes one bullet in the arm/shoulder area, and throws the plastic hammer, which bitchslaps Jacob in the face. He shakes it off and continues firing at her, also taking out his knife, because he's feeling Murder-Death-Killy and they haven't dragged John Spartan out of the cryotube yet to stop him.
Katherine takes yet another bullet to the side, and then finds her meat hook and decides to try and make a steak out of Jacob. As he's getting slashed at, Jacob muses that it's his end goal to take down the terrorists. Uhhh, kay. He finally introduces himself, and she ends up getting stabbed in the arm as he does.
At this point, Katherine is a mess, and has pretty much been reduced to a blubbering mess, and Jacob is still unloading on her, when Cillian Crowe saunters his way into the area. He chucks a rock at Jacob's head, screams into the house, much like I would assume Gollum would, and runs away.
Cillian Crowe forever sounds like Gollum to me when he speaks and I'm not sure why.
Jacob no-sells the rock, and turns back to try and finish Katherine off. She uses a burst of adrenaline to run past him and peace out, while Kaishi uses this opportunity to chastise Slayer for pushing characters into a corner to get kills. She's correct in this, though I can't help but wonder if a PM would have sufficed. Though again, I do remember that it was super frustrating, and yeah - we had a chat back then. It was called AOL Instant Messenger, so... wouldn't be surprised if that had something to do with it. Nonetheless, he's called out fairly and gently, and Slayer gets super defensive as the thread peters out.
We join Katherine outside of the warehouse, where she plans to lure Aaron Redfield (another Slayer character) into her trap to try and get his weapon off of him. I'm... a little unsure of the decision to have her use her wiles to fall into a trap, but that's v1 for ya. The next few posts are weirdly bogged down by OOC notes, but of note, Chi Masumi runs into the area and hides behind a tree, watching Aaron and Katherine. She naturally assumes correctly that Katherine is trying to trap Aaron.
I'm weirded out by this line:
Chi wrote:
(The boys who are killers in this game are usually very happy to recieve free sexual favors.)
Since I don't recall this happening in SOTF OR BR. I could be wrong, but... just an odd thing to say. Kaishi then OOC establishes a posting order (AHEAD OF THE CURVE BY A FEW YEARS METHINKS) and she starts relaying her story to Aaron, crying some big ol' crocodile tears. She tells him a story about Jacob Starr, and he gets so mad that he punches the ground. Ouch. The ground is hard, dude. He immediately feels bad for her and tries to go about helping her.
Chi continues to watch, like the little voyeur she is. We find out that she banged Katherine's ex-boyfriend Shaun, which I'm okay with for the sake of the fact that she probably read the profile.
Katherine lifts up her shirt to show Aaron her brand new gunshot wound, and Aaron gets red and embarrassed, because he's pretty sure that he didn't get his cooties shot last month and I'm not sure that his folks have had the birds and the bees talk with him yet.
Aaron keeps on trying to help, while Chi realizes what she's trying to do to Aaron from afar. She then springs her trap, pointing at the tree-line and claiming to see Jacob. There is no Jacob, and Aaron is confused, Chi is happy not to have been seen, and Katherine brushes it off and starts coming onto Aaron.
Aaron suddenly starts having pain in his eye and gets distracted, and Katherine decides that it's time to make use of the meat-hook. She digs the damn thing into his spine, and he's paralyzed. She apologizes to him, claiming that she's planning on getting out of here and having a family. She gives him a compliment on his looks as she then proceeds to run the meat hook through his throat, bringing an end to Aaron Redfield's time on the island.
Chi, who's been watching this whole thing happen, finally decides that enough is enough, and jumps out, aims for Katherine's eye, and shoots her right through the eye with a slingshot. Katherine, just fresh off of proving that she knows how to kill and can survive after all, turns around and basically walks right into it - and she's dead before she even hits the floor. So much for the bright future.
Conclusion:
So, Katherine Marks - how was my trip through your short but eventful life? Actually, pretty good. Kaishi was one of the strongest writers in the original v1 run, and it's clear that she knew exactly what she wanted the site to be before any of the rest of us figured it out. Katherine is a fully formed character, and while I feel that maybe her story got expedited a little bit after her battle with Jacob, I actually really enjoyed her death post and her encounter with Aaron.
There isn't much to say, outside of yeah, give Katherine a read. She's a solid, short character and I think she's well done. Hearing that Kaishi is still writing today, 12 years later doesn't surprise me at all, because you can see that the talent is definitely there from the get-go.
(Original post by Kermit)
DAAAaaaAaaAAaAAAhhhHHLiIIiIAAaaAAA RIiiIIiIIIiiIiVIIiiiIIEeEEEEEEEEeeeEeEEEeRAaAaAAa!? hADDY SAYS ITs TiMe fOR US TO play HiDE AND SEeEeEeeeEEeeK! AUAUahUHUAUHAUHahaH aHaHAHaHehEhe HEHahaHAhEHEhuau ahuhUa AHuHUAuh AhAhahAhaHA AAAAAaaAaaaAaAaaAA aaAAaaaaaaaAaaAa!
Profile!
Dahlia's appearance is p. good for v1. She's got a h o t b o d but a n o t h o t face and big feet also
her bio is normal and i dont have much to say about it it's decent i guess
Island!?
Dahlia is sad. Reasonable.
The announcements come on and she's like ": O" because "Fawley Hawst" killed four people, so she goes and looks in her bag to see what weapon she got, and discovers a pickaxe. This makes her A N G E R Y so she tries to throw the pickaxe at a wall but, well, I'll just let the post speak for itself.
i h8 physics ugf wrote:
dahlia how
wat r u doin
Dahlia makes A N G E R Y noises at Danya, but then Oh NoOoOoOoOOOoOOoOoO! IT's CILLian CrOWe!
Cillian does Cillian things and Dahlia's like "get the fuck away what the fuck are you doing". Cillian does more Cillian things and Dahlia does more reasonable person things like run away, and Cillian being Cillian thinks this means it's time for some hIDE aNd gO sEek!
Dahlia hides underneath the gazebo and Cillian, having finished counting to ten, opens his eyes, and not being able to immediately spot Dahlia, has an A N G E R Y temper tantrum. Dahlia gets scurred and screams, allowing Cillian to know where she is.
Damn it Dahlia, you had one job.
Cillian kills Dahlia using his FINGERNAILS (WAT) like the slasher villain he is, so rip dahlia i guess.
Conclusion: She had a decent base to work off of, but she just ended up being Cillian fodder so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
DAAAaaaAaaAAaAAAhhhHHLiIIiIAAaaAAA RIiiIIiIIIiiIiVIIiiiIIEeEEEEEEEEeeeEeEEEeRAaAaAAa!? hADDY SAYS ITs TiMe fOR US TO play HiDE AND SEeEeEeeeEEeeK! AUAUahUHUAUHAUHahaH aHaHAHaHehEhe HEHahaHAhEHEhuau ahuhUa AHuHUAuh AhAhahAhaHA AAAAAaaAaaaAaAaaAA aaAAaaaaaaaAaaAa!
Profile!
Dahlia's appearance is p. good for v1. She's got a h o t b o d but a n o t h o t face and big feet also
her bio is normal and i dont have much to say about it it's decent i guess
Oh you poor, innocent thing. I am so sorry about what will happen to you.Dahlia absolutely abhores violence and the sight of blood enough to make her faint. She has a particular fondness for babies and small furry animals.
Island!?
Dahlia is sad. Reasonable.
The announcements come on and she's like ": O" because "Fawley Hawst" killed four people, so she goes and looks in her bag to see what weapon she got, and discovers a pickaxe. This makes her A N G E R Y so she tries to throw the pickaxe at a wall but, well, I'll just let the post speak for itself.
i h8 physics ugf wrote:
lolA pickaxe? What was she supposed to do with a pickaxe. Dahlia let out a scream of frustration and tossed it behind her head aiming for the gazebo platform. Instead of reaching it's target goal, the sharp blade of the pickaxe came down and stabbed her in the shoulder. She screamed out in shocked pain. The rain poured down around her as she clutched the spot that bled bright crimson.
dahlia how
wat r u doin
Dahlia makes A N G E R Y noises at Danya, but then Oh NoOoOoOoOOOoOOoOoO! IT's CILLian CrOWe!
Cillian does Cillian things and Dahlia's like "get the fuck away what the fuck are you doing". Cillian does more Cillian things and Dahlia does more reasonable person things like run away, and Cillian being Cillian thinks this means it's time for some hIDE aNd gO sEek!
Dahlia hides underneath the gazebo and Cillian, having finished counting to ten, opens his eyes, and not being able to immediately spot Dahlia, has an A N G E R Y temper tantrum. Dahlia gets scurred and screams, allowing Cillian to know where she is.
Damn it Dahlia, you had one job.
Cillian kills Dahlia using his FINGERNAILS (WAT) like the slasher villain he is, so rip dahlia i guess.
Conclusion: She had a decent base to work off of, but she just ended up being Cillian fodder so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
(Original post by Blastinus)
It's actually kind of odd that I'd get Kichiro Taka right after Umi Martin. Call it serendipity, I suppose. Or just that he was one of the last kids remaining. Either way, his bio is pretty much nothing but his relationship with Umi, so let's just dive right in to the meat of the thing.
Oh jeez, we've got the ungrateful gits thing happening right at the start, as Kichiro tries to find shelter in a house, has his hands above his head, and yet the folks inside are still discussing how suspicious he is and how they should totally kill him. Like, here's how Kichiro responds to Terry Woodard accusing him of having a gun:
But, bygones having been declared and all that, they let Kichiro go, and it's time for Japanese 101 as he runs into Kiyoko and the two of them have a lengthy conversation that's only subtitled sometimes. Bonding over the fact that he actually knows her language, Kiyoko and Kichiro team up, and Kichiro's locking his arm around hers in just one more thread, though he claims it's just so he can "protect her". Sure, buddy. They meet Cassandra Roivas, and after a bit of initial distrust, they realize that they're not playing and settle down to discuss what their plans are and where to go from there.
You see that, Terry? It's what you call polite conversation.
The two having become three, they hear about Terry and August dying, and Kichiro is sad and vows revenge. Standard stuff. They then arrive at the Andrew Lipson death scene, which we've covered plenty of times, and oh no, Umi's right there, but he doesn't recognize her! Then he hears that the bamboo coppice is on fire and that Umi was just there, so he's off to the rescue, leaving her unknowingly behind at the cliff.
The way he dies is...odd. Basically he goes charging into the burning bamboo and chokes to death on the smoke, only realizing right before he collapses that he actually left Umi behind. I guess it's supposed to be tragic, but I dunno. Something about it isn't resonating with me. It seems so unmotivated by reason or logic and it's a bizarrely stupid way for a guy who was acting fairly intelligently before to meet his demise. Overall, it's a neutral ending, and that's how I feel about Kichiro in general. I didn't really hate or like him. He was just sort of there. I guess being average is better than being awful so...props for that, I guess?
If there are no kids left, then I'll bid this Read-a-Thon adieu. It's been fun!
It's actually kind of odd that I'd get Kichiro Taka right after Umi Martin. Call it serendipity, I suppose. Or just that he was one of the last kids remaining. Either way, his bio is pretty much nothing but his relationship with Umi, so let's just dive right in to the meat of the thing.
Oh jeez, we've got the ungrateful gits thing happening right at the start, as Kichiro tries to find shelter in a house, has his hands above his head, and yet the folks inside are still discussing how suspicious he is and how they should totally kill him. Like, here's how Kichiro responds to Terry Woodard accusing him of having a gun:
And Terry responds:"Common sense here, let's use some common sense," he started, not being able to stop the sarcasm, "I would have shot you already, had I a gun. Because, frankly, you don't. Or you would've shot me by now instead of having this little interrogation. I'm not here to play games, especially not their sadistic one where some serial killer wins. I just want to see where I stand on this!"
Like, seriously, there's a bit of an edge to Kichiro's defense, but he's not being a jerk, as far as I can tell. He's just somewhat impatient with a couple of folks who are dead-set on murdering him for something he isn't doing. Even when he does comply and show them his weapon, a stun gun, Terry still threatens him and acts like he's some high-strung murderer when he clearly isn't. He's just a sarcastic kid. It's actually KICHIRO who apologizes for how HE acted in the end, and that's...just a bit nonsensical. He gave up his bag when asked, never made a threatening move, and it was Terry and August Masbeth who were constantly plotting to murder him."The reason you're not dead yet asshole is because I'm. not. playing.," Terry yelled back saying each word slowly and clearly.
Terry gripped the handle of the bat tighter in anger. God like he actually thinks that attitude is going to get him anywhere with us.
But, bygones having been declared and all that, they let Kichiro go, and it's time for Japanese 101 as he runs into Kiyoko and the two of them have a lengthy conversation that's only subtitled sometimes. Bonding over the fact that he actually knows her language, Kiyoko and Kichiro team up, and Kichiro's locking his arm around hers in just one more thread, though he claims it's just so he can "protect her". Sure, buddy. They meet Cassandra Roivas, and after a bit of initial distrust, they realize that they're not playing and settle down to discuss what their plans are and where to go from there.
You see that, Terry? It's what you call polite conversation.
The two having become three, they hear about Terry and August dying, and Kichiro is sad and vows revenge. Standard stuff. They then arrive at the Andrew Lipson death scene, which we've covered plenty of times, and oh no, Umi's right there, but he doesn't recognize her! Then he hears that the bamboo coppice is on fire and that Umi was just there, so he's off to the rescue, leaving her unknowingly behind at the cliff.
The way he dies is...odd. Basically he goes charging into the burning bamboo and chokes to death on the smoke, only realizing right before he collapses that he actually left Umi behind. I guess it's supposed to be tragic, but I dunno. Something about it isn't resonating with me. It seems so unmotivated by reason or logic and it's a bizarrely stupid way for a guy who was acting fairly intelligently before to meet his demise. Overall, it's a neutral ending, and that's how I feel about Kichiro in general. I didn't really hate or like him. He was just sort of there. I guess being average is better than being awful so...props for that, I guess?
If there are no kids left, then I'll bid this Read-a-Thon adieu. It's been fun!
(Original post by Cactus)
So this'll be... short. Since I've apparently become allergic or air or something and I'm barely coherent, thanks to antihistamines. Wheeeeeeeee.
Conclusion:
Do yourself a favour and SKIP THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THIS. It's very short, and very, very much a waste of my time. The best part about this was getting to listen to the youtube video "how is prangent formed" and its sequel "curse of the weggy board" a few times while writing it, because this just sucked.
Also, Ash Holmes fully no-sells a bullet to the chest that LEAVES A HOLE IN HIS CHEST.
I read ahead to see if he fully forgets about it. He does, but he only lasts another page before Cillian Crowe comes along and knives him in the brain. Oy, V1.
*bows out*
So this'll be... short. Since I've apparently become allergic or air or something and I'm barely coherent, thanks to antihistamines. Wheeeeeeeee.
Spoiler!
Bio:
This is a very short bio. She's from the Butts' Academy for Girls. A very quick cursory Google search revealed that both a) this is not a real place, and b) I am probably on some sort of watch list now. Great. Basically the most important thing about Sophis is that she's prangent. Just remember that.
Apparently she didn't have a male role model so she got promiscuous, resulting in her getting pegnate. She's a loner, too. So she's a pregonate loner. This should be a fun voyage. We all know what happens to pergert girls in SOTF.
Game:
Sophie wakes up on the beach, and the first thing she realized is that her swelling belly is empty. Because she's pregananant and all that jazz. Just in case you didn't know. She's very quickly joined by Ash Holmes, who straight up just points at her prengt belly and tells her that he's got a way off the island - no, it's not in his pants, which is where I thought he was going, but it's fully just an invitation for him to put her out of her misery. Like what? Ash, you fucking psycho. That's a gregnant girl you're talking to.
Sophie naturally is freaked out by Ash's psycho offer, and so because he's not coming off villainous enough, he takes out a cigarette and lights it, getting off on her fear. He then continues to try and sell her on the whole "hey, how about I kill you, k cool" thing.
So things escalate, of course, Sophie trips oever her own bag but manages to open it, spill everything out on the sand, and - look at that, she's got a gun! Sophie's got a gun! So she fires it at Ash. Aaaaand she hits him?
Wait, what? She just blew a fucking hole in his chest.
He NEARLY drops his cigarette, because apparently no-selling a bullet is cool beans back in 05, and he just keeps walking towards her like the T-1000, asking her if her aim was a fluke.
Wat.
Sophie is as confused as I am, and she keeps firing the gun at him. She empties the gun, and of course, can't hit the broadside of a barn. He tells her that he's disappointed (seeming to forget about the hole in his chest, hmm) and attacks her with his cigarette (seriously, like how many Terminator references can we get here), kicking her into the ocean. Come on, Ash. Don't treat the pergenat girl like that. She falls in the water, and Ash literally walks over to her, and stands on her while she's underwater.
What a dick.
So he stands and looks up at the sky, admiring the scenery and having a smoke as he casually drowns the pragnan girl. Sophie can't get up, tries to call for her mommy, and drowns.
So much for SOTF's first ever pargant girl.
This is a very short bio. She's from the Butts' Academy for Girls. A very quick cursory Google search revealed that both a) this is not a real place, and b) I am probably on some sort of watch list now. Great. Basically the most important thing about Sophis is that she's prangent. Just remember that.
Apparently she didn't have a male role model so she got promiscuous, resulting in her getting pegnate. She's a loner, too. So she's a pregonate loner. This should be a fun voyage. We all know what happens to pergert girls in SOTF.
Game:
Sophie wakes up on the beach, and the first thing she realized is that her swelling belly is empty. Because she's pregananant and all that jazz. Just in case you didn't know. She's very quickly joined by Ash Holmes, who straight up just points at her prengt belly and tells her that he's got a way off the island - no, it's not in his pants, which is where I thought he was going, but it's fully just an invitation for him to put her out of her misery. Like what? Ash, you fucking psycho. That's a gregnant girl you're talking to.
Sophie naturally is freaked out by Ash's psycho offer, and so because he's not coming off villainous enough, he takes out a cigarette and lights it, getting off on her fear. He then continues to try and sell her on the whole "hey, how about I kill you, k cool" thing.
So things escalate, of course, Sophie trips oever her own bag but manages to open it, spill everything out on the sand, and - look at that, she's got a gun! Sophie's got a gun! So she fires it at Ash. Aaaaand she hits him?
Wait, what? She just blew a fucking hole in his chest.
He NEARLY drops his cigarette, because apparently no-selling a bullet is cool beans back in 05, and he just keeps walking towards her like the T-1000, asking her if her aim was a fluke.
Wat.
Sophie is as confused as I am, and she keeps firing the gun at him. She empties the gun, and of course, can't hit the broadside of a barn. He tells her that he's disappointed (seeming to forget about the hole in his chest, hmm) and attacks her with his cigarette (seriously, like how many Terminator references can we get here), kicking her into the ocean. Come on, Ash. Don't treat the pergenat girl like that. She falls in the water, and Ash literally walks over to her, and stands on her while she's underwater.
What a dick.
So he stands and looks up at the sky, admiring the scenery and having a smoke as he casually drowns the pragnan girl. Sophie can't get up, tries to call for her mommy, and drowns.
So much for SOTF's first ever pargant girl.
Conclusion:
Do yourself a favour and SKIP THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THIS. It's very short, and very, very much a waste of my time. The best part about this was getting to listen to the youtube video "how is prangent formed" and its sequel "curse of the weggy board" a few times while writing it, because this just sucked.
Also, Ash Holmes fully no-sells a bullet to the chest that LEAVES A HOLE IN HIS CHEST.
I read ahead to see if he fully forgets about it. He does, but he only lasts another page before Cillian Crowe comes along and knives him in the brain. Oy, V1.
*bows out*
(Original post by CPB)
Blaine Eno:
Kids.
Yes, you.
"Eat your greens. Stay in school. Don't do drugs."
Common advice in today's world, right? But in the end, most of us choose to play by a different set of rules. Don't lie, none of you eat your greens. I know this to be true. I have more faith in this than I do the ability of pigs to play the acoustic guitar.
...
Well, even if you don't follow these rules, at least you can go to sleep at night knowing you didn't turn out like Blaine Eno, of Barry Coleson High. Gather 'round the campfire, and let me play you a tune.
It's called,
...
*ahem*
It's a story that, at its earliest known date of sharing, was told by my great-great-grandfather to his son, who passed it to his children, and then to his children's children, and then to his children's children's children, who passed it along to me. There are many inconsistencies in the story, mostly with the kid's behavior, and some of the choices he made strike me as bizarre.
But as long as there's a campfire and an acoustic guitar, I'll play this song and sing these words to anyone with a willing ear.
...
What's that?
...Pigs can't play guitar?
...
Well, how about that.
Blaine Eno:
Kids.
Yes, you.
"Eat your greens. Stay in school. Don't do drugs."
Common advice in today's world, right? But in the end, most of us choose to play by a different set of rules. Don't lie, none of you eat your greens. I know this to be true. I have more faith in this than I do the ability of pigs to play the acoustic guitar.
...
Well, even if you don't follow these rules, at least you can go to sleep at night knowing you didn't turn out like Blaine Eno, of Barry Coleson High. Gather 'round the campfire, and let me play you a tune.
It's called,
Spoiler!
In a land of madness, death and decay,
There was a lazy boy named Blaine,
With punkish hair and a strange hat,
He caused a good deal of pain.
Hailing from the nordic lands,
His family's coffers stuffed with cash,
For his first seven years, he was at peace,
'Till his mother did something brash.
She hid in the shadows with a gun,
And shot his father in the face,
Blaine was sent to live with his aunt,
Not the last time he'd be displaced.
Stockholm's eyes turned toward the murder,
And their hearts away from the poor kid,
He took his anger out on small critters,
Until he snapped, and blew his lid.
Blaine brought a knife to school one day,
His Aunt threw him into foster care,
Now, why he wasn't tossed away sooner,
I don't know, and cannot share.
Sent away across the ocean,
Into arms that held him tight,
"All he really needed was a good home, see?"
And for once, Eno was alright.
He took up running, and the sax,
And seemed to all a normal teen,
But inside he still felt bloodlust,
And in his mind, he could still hear screams.
Reformation was not out of the picture,
But as it turned out, God felt
The boy had not seen enough suffering,
And too fair a hand had been dealt.
Uprooted from his normal life
By some more messed up than he,
They handed Eno some Piano Wire,
and told him to realize his fantasies.
He woke up on an island,
And felt pulled towards a nearby cliff,
Sitting at the edge, he let his feet dangle,
With thoughts of death, he felt himself lift.
But from over a hill sounded gunshots,
Aimed directly at his back,
Two hunters descended upon him, then,
And Blaine found himself under attack.
His instincts drew him to his weapon,
His own blood dotting the wire,
But sense grabbed him, and he feld,
Carried away from the gunfire.
Eno's legs carried him by a river,
In the water, he saw he'd been grazed,
He cleaned his wounds, there, singing the pain away,
And for a moment there, he lazed.
"Why won't anyone be friends with me?
I just want to be whole again,"
And with that, he got up and left,
In search of someone to be his friend.
Under the roof of a lighthouse, he rested,
He heard the patter of the rain,
The place outside it two corpses,
The bodies igniting his thirst for pain.
He found another body down the hall,
And from its hands he pulled an axe,
Feeling elated, he examined it,
And how it felt in his grasp.
He noticed not the door behind him,
Opening with a slight creak,
A girl named Wednesday charged him down,
But to his charms, she was weak.
Sympathetic to his plight, she was,
Though this made her out to be fool,
When another kid turned the corner,
And found himself in a duel.
"Do you want to play a game?" Blaine asked,
The kid, Jimmy Moreland, backed away,
"I played it with animals as a kid," Eno hummed,
And, alive, Jimmy was flayed.
Struck in the thigh, his blood pooled,
And over Jimmy's body, Eno wailed,
Not knowing someone had come up the path,
Looked through the door, and went pale.
Hearing commotion, Eno rose,
And greeted the five at the gates,
Somewhere inside, his friend sat petrified,
Slowly realizing Blaine's true traits.
The travelling band grew disgusted,
And, after some talking, they left,
Disgruntled, Blaine decided to follow them,
Of any shame, he was bereft.
He followed them back down to the river,
The same water he stared into,
And as he saw that a few were resting,
Inside his heart, his hatred grew.
He shouted at the ones he could see,
Asking for the friendship of just one,
And when they failed to understand his mercy,
Blaine Eno broke into a run.
Terrified, those that could ran away,
Only to trip on dirt and rocks,
Handaxe raised, Blaine lunged,
His hair blown about in locks.
From the bushes, a shot rang out,
And tore its way through Eno's shoulder,
With a scream, Eno fell to his side,
The air around him growing colder.
He charged at the hero with a shotgun,
And struck him square in the arm,
Cursing him, the hero drew his bat,
His aim to kill, but first disarm.
Eno was struck, and fell to his knees,
From his face came streaks of blood,
Reaching out, he uttered the word "Can't,"
The dam that he broke unleashing its flood.
There were no memories before in his mind,
No images of the life he had led,
The hero put a slug right between his eyes,
And, finally, Blaine Eno was dead.
His end came quick, though not quick enough,
The water settled back in its steady flow,
That nearby river would never again reflect,
The face of Blaine Lesta Eno.
There was a lazy boy named Blaine,
With punkish hair and a strange hat,
He caused a good deal of pain.
Hailing from the nordic lands,
His family's coffers stuffed with cash,
For his first seven years, he was at peace,
'Till his mother did something brash.
She hid in the shadows with a gun,
And shot his father in the face,
Blaine was sent to live with his aunt,
Not the last time he'd be displaced.
Stockholm's eyes turned toward the murder,
And their hearts away from the poor kid,
He took his anger out on small critters,
Until he snapped, and blew his lid.
Blaine brought a knife to school one day,
His Aunt threw him into foster care,
Now, why he wasn't tossed away sooner,
I don't know, and cannot share.
Sent away across the ocean,
Into arms that held him tight,
"All he really needed was a good home, see?"
And for once, Eno was alright.
He took up running, and the sax,
And seemed to all a normal teen,
But inside he still felt bloodlust,
And in his mind, he could still hear screams.
Reformation was not out of the picture,
But as it turned out, God felt
The boy had not seen enough suffering,
And too fair a hand had been dealt.
Uprooted from his normal life
By some more messed up than he,
They handed Eno some Piano Wire,
and told him to realize his fantasies.
He woke up on an island,
And felt pulled towards a nearby cliff,
Sitting at the edge, he let his feet dangle,
With thoughts of death, he felt himself lift.
But from over a hill sounded gunshots,
Aimed directly at his back,
Two hunters descended upon him, then,
And Blaine found himself under attack.
His instincts drew him to his weapon,
His own blood dotting the wire,
But sense grabbed him, and he feld,
Carried away from the gunfire.
Eno's legs carried him by a river,
In the water, he saw he'd been grazed,
He cleaned his wounds, there, singing the pain away,
And for a moment there, he lazed.
"Why won't anyone be friends with me?
I just want to be whole again,"
And with that, he got up and left,
In search of someone to be his friend.
Under the roof of a lighthouse, he rested,
He heard the patter of the rain,
The place outside it two corpses,
The bodies igniting his thirst for pain.
He found another body down the hall,
And from its hands he pulled an axe,
Feeling elated, he examined it,
And how it felt in his grasp.
He noticed not the door behind him,
Opening with a slight creak,
A girl named Wednesday charged him down,
But to his charms, she was weak.
Sympathetic to his plight, she was,
Though this made her out to be fool,
When another kid turned the corner,
And found himself in a duel.
"Do you want to play a game?" Blaine asked,
The kid, Jimmy Moreland, backed away,
"I played it with animals as a kid," Eno hummed,
And, alive, Jimmy was flayed.
Struck in the thigh, his blood pooled,
And over Jimmy's body, Eno wailed,
Not knowing someone had come up the path,
Looked through the door, and went pale.
Hearing commotion, Eno rose,
And greeted the five at the gates,
Somewhere inside, his friend sat petrified,
Slowly realizing Blaine's true traits.
The travelling band grew disgusted,
And, after some talking, they left,
Disgruntled, Blaine decided to follow them,
Of any shame, he was bereft.
He followed them back down to the river,
The same water he stared into,
And as he saw that a few were resting,
Inside his heart, his hatred grew.
He shouted at the ones he could see,
Asking for the friendship of just one,
And when they failed to understand his mercy,
Blaine Eno broke into a run.
Terrified, those that could ran away,
Only to trip on dirt and rocks,
Handaxe raised, Blaine lunged,
His hair blown about in locks.
From the bushes, a shot rang out,
And tore its way through Eno's shoulder,
With a scream, Eno fell to his side,
The air around him growing colder.
He charged at the hero with a shotgun,
And struck him square in the arm,
Cursing him, the hero drew his bat,
His aim to kill, but first disarm.
Eno was struck, and fell to his knees,
From his face came streaks of blood,
Reaching out, he uttered the word "Can't,"
The dam that he broke unleashing its flood.
There were no memories before in his mind,
No images of the life he had led,
The hero put a slug right between his eyes,
And, finally, Blaine Eno was dead.
His end came quick, though not quick enough,
The water settled back in its steady flow,
That nearby river would never again reflect,
The face of Blaine Lesta Eno.
...
*ahem*
It's a story that, at its earliest known date of sharing, was told by my great-great-grandfather to his son, who passed it to his children, and then to his children's children, and then to his children's children's children, who passed it along to me. There are many inconsistencies in the story, mostly with the kid's behavior, and some of the choices he made strike me as bizarre.
But as long as there's a campfire and an acoustic guitar, I'll play this song and sing these words to anyone with a willing ear.
...
What's that?
...Pigs can't play guitar?
...
Well, how about that.
(Original post by Catche Jagger)
I have returned from my quest, and with me I bring the spoils of my success:
So, would I recommend Martyn Ferdinand? I guess so. He's got some troubles and his story really doesn't get going until "Today's The Day, I Pray That We Make It Through". I'd also say that you can get his whole story by reading Jill Gatling instead, who I perceive to be a more well-realized character overall. Still, his story is an important part of that whole Jack O'Connor virus thing that apparently also showed up in V3 somehow. Recommended!
I have returned from my quest, and with me I bring the spoils of my success:
Spoiler!
Well, we start by looking at Marty's bio, as one does. In the early goings we get one of the fun little quirks of V1, that whole "not everyone is from the same school" gimmick. You see, Martyn is Scottish and therefore goes to school in Scotland. This is a bit weird, but considering this is the same version where someone came from Arkham Asylum, it's only a minor anomaly. The rest of the bio goes on to describe how our boy's a kind of rebellious computer wiz (I can dig that) and that he's also got a laptop with him on the island. (Oooooo the intrigue!)
V1's got no Pregame which means we can jump right into the Island.
Weird little blip here, Martyn's bio says he's 15, but the very first line of his very first post says he's sixteen. This isn't, like, a big criticism of the character since everyone in V1 has weird shit going on, but just reading that part made me feel like I had missed something or just lost my mind for a moment. It isn't the best foot to start off on, regardless.
Martyn spends his first couple of threads not doing a whole lot, mainly because riserugu has trouble getting anyone to interact with him consistently without going inactive.There is one highlight in this period here, though: Martyn manages to come across this Sven kid who's "off his pills", trying to hide out in an open field, and having visions of blood. What a wild guy. He immediately goes inactive, of course.
Martyn's next thread sees him show up in what turns out to be a bit of a chaotic mess involving Jerry Starr, Adam Dodd, Madelaine Shirohara, Cody Jenson, and others. I read a fair bit of this thread during a Dodd readthrough I did and I remember it being annoying to keep track of what the many characters were doing at any given time. At some point in the thread this explicitly becomes a problem for guitarjack, Cody's handler, who loses track of what is happening at one point.
I would continue narrating Martyn's story, but first we're going to need yet another aside focusing on Martyn's Scottishness. You see, our boy Marty speaks with a Scottish accent, which can lead to some of his dialogue being written like this
"Bloody, fuckin', 'ell in a handbasket."
Which isn't the most grating V1 accent around, but it's still kind of annoying.
So yeah, back to the action. Marty ends up wandering up to the Old Warehouse because he's lost, and upon seeing a couple of armed guys, he decides to back away quietly. However, he manages to break a stick and alert them to his presence. The guys turn out to be David Jackson and Adam Dodd though there's some initial suspicion, things generally go off without a hitch. Dodd then suggests that Martyn go to the roof for safety. Martyn obliges and begins his climb up, but stops as a brief firefight between the other two and Jacob Starr occurs (David chasing after him to go and get iced).
At this point, Martyn is enlisted by Dodd to help open up the warehouse, before they get distracted by an arriving Jill Gatling. Since Marty barely known either of them, he just kind of awkwardly stands around and thinks about how isolated he is a random Scottish kid in a game full of American high schoolers. This awkward standing around allows him to hear Amanda Jones and Madelaine Shirohara calling from within the warehouse, which he alerts Jill and Dodd to. They waste a lot of time discussing what to do and then just find a door and open it. The two girls that were trapped inside join up with them and the five all head off together, though Martyn has some suspicions about Adam after hearing his name called over the announcements (and also Cody Jenson is there).
In the next thread, Martyn is the last of the five to arrive at the River and a bunch of shit (Including the rape of Madelaine Shirohara and the her murder along with the murder of Amanda Jones at the hands of Cody Jenson) happens. Marty's just kinda there, nearby. After shit goes down, he of course comes across the bodies along with everyone else and is accordingly shocked.
Dodd has a sad songpost and then runs off. Jill also runs off, but without a songpost. Also frightened and sad and perhaps feeling a bit left out, Martyn also wanders out of the thread. Apparently he actually follows Jill, but that's not clear until the next thread because here for some reason Megami identifies her next location links by the area name rather than the thread name even though they're still linking to the thread...
Marty finally catches up to Jill, but their little talk gets interrupted by a debuting Jack O'Connor, who runs into the scene, introduces himself, and declares that he's not playing. Martyn and Jill decide that he seems alright, so Jack takes the opportunity to ask if the duo happens to have a computer, though he won't tell them why he needs it. Martyn lies and says that neither of them have one. Despite this tension, Jack still ends up joining the duo as they depart for the waterfall and a thread with a friggin jibberish title.
The trio arrive at the waterfall and Jill screams when she screams when she sees a corpse which sidetracks them a bit. Also Kouji Ginsenshi, my idol, my inspiration, is here but he doesn't do much before him and Eh-Sun flee the thread without really interacting with Martyn, Jill, and Jack. The trio decides to take a moment's rest and Martyn changes his tune about Jack, writing a secret note to him informing him about the computer and asking him about an escape plan. Jack writes back and says that he wants to use his hacker skills to bring the whole operation down from the inside. Before the conversation can go further, Michael "Klepto" Suarez shows up and everyone spends a while introducing themselves and getting him up to speed while Martyn and Jack continue their silent convo. Mike almost blows their cover since he's an idiot, but Martyn tells him off.
Also worthy of note is that not only does Martyn speak and think in a shitty accent, he also writes in one. I'd be lying if I said it didn't really hurt his story, considering all the secrecy and note writing going down.
Anyway, Jill has doubts about Martyn and Jack's plan and suggests that they all find shelter at the warehouse (because it was so safe the last time they were there) and Martyn ends up agreeing as he starts to doubts of his own. The trio depart and end up abandoning Mike.
The next and last thread is one of those absurdly long V1 threads with 12 pages, of which Martyn is alive for 11. Onslaught Redux is a long, dense ride folks.
So the trio arrive at the warehouse and immediately encounter two new folks: Luca, whose only character trait is "is a bitch" and Gilbert who's sort of a nervous loser. Luca starts shooting Jill from the warehouse roof which freaks Gilbert out and he rushes over to help Jill, only to bump into Martyn which leads ol' Marty to threaten him. Gilbert quickly caves and they have a tense exchange, kind of ignoring what's going on with Jill and Luca. Luckily, Luca drops down from the roof to get a better shot (I guess?) and Jill manages to kill her by herself.
Jack shows up behind the others and Gilbert tries to explain what happened, but also panics, causing him to randomly and accidentally fire his gun into the nearby undergrowth. This freaks out Jason Andrews, who was just sitting around, waiting to attack all four students, so he returns fire at the whole group, killing Gilbert. Luckily, Dodd shows up out of nowhere and starts beating the shit out of Jason, which leads to a quick scuffle where Dodd ends up killing him pretty handily. Jack is weirdly unsettled by this even though he was fine with Jill killing Luca and acknowledged the Jason was likely a player, but Jason did say "Please don't" before getting his head blown off and Jack knew him from baseball, so whatever. Jack calls for a truce and Dodd, Jill, and Martyn have a quick catch-up. Martyn is overall less phased by the crazy shit that's just happened than either of his allies, though it is a bit less personal for him.
Soon, Jack and Martyn head inside to set up the laptop while Jill continues talking to Dodd before he heads off again. Apparently Martyn's laptop not only has power, but also has access to the internet? Whatever. Jack covers up the cameras with clothes from the bodies outside, in order to keep stuff secret, and then Marty hands things over to him.
Martyn and Jill just kind of stand around while they wait for Jack to use his super hacker powers. While he's waiting, Martyn starts to get a bit of development, thinking about how much he misses the family that he used to resent. Jack gets up and reveals that he's only fucked with the cameras a bit to test the waters, not wanting to expose them until later in the game. Via notes, the Jack suggests that he can probably get the three of them out of the game, but no others. Martyn is, once again, fine with this, but Jill is uncomfortable because she had wanted to bring Dodd along. As Jack steps back into the warehouse, Jill says that she doesn't trust him and that Martyn should keep a close eye on him, but ol' Marty doesn't take it too seriously.
Martyn takes first watch and is quickly attacked by a newly arriving Lucinda Garnett. She stabs him in the back and gives him a slash in his neck, while he shoots her in the eye before she runs off. Jill and Jack quickly rush outside and attend to him. Martyn tries to downplay his injuries, but he's in pretty bad shape. Jack starts to fix up his wounds just in time for Sidney Crosby to show up by running headlong into the warehouse wall. Jack decides that he'll deal with the newcomer, leaving Jill to attend to Martyn's needs.
Yet another person, a girl named Hannah, also shows up and pulls a gun on the group. However, Jill and Jack just tell her that there's four of them and one of her and that she should drop her weapon. She complies immediately and apologizes, saying she was just scared. Martyn tries to speak up, but can't really speak at the moment. Hannah asks if she can stay with them to which Jill and Jack reply with an emphatic no. It is then that Martyn finally summons his strength and stands up, becoming a bit delirious in the process as he tells Jack and Jill that they are being too harsh on the girl, that he thinks Jill is cute, and that hockey's the "stick and round thing game." Crosby also starts in on Jill for being too harsh about Hannah, but is far more of an abrasive douche about it. Though Jill can handle Crosby verbally, she gets flustered by Martyn's comments and decides that they should all just head inside, as long as Hannah gives up her weapon (which she does).
Jack's peeved that Jill has accepted Hannah, but his motivation for doing so abruptly changes to being about her being dead weight or something, rather than the reasonable problem of her having threatened them. Martyn is brought to a smaller office room in the back of the warehouse where Jill soon joins him. He flirts with her a little, but they soon turn toward more pressing topics, such as the idea of perhaps tampering with the collars on some of the corpses. They're interrupted by the Eighth Announcement, which reveals that Sidney has killed someone. Jack flips his shit, which further alienates those in the warehouse with him and Sidney doesn't help things much by explaining it was an accident, but also threatening to expose their hacking plans if Jack tries to kick him out.
This is where the thread starts to get really convoluted. Jeremy Torres, his brother Ryan, and Clare Shepard arrive with the apparent goal of luring the people inside of the people in the warehouse out so that they can take their weapons, but not kill them. To this end, Ryan runs up to the warehouse and yells that he's being attacked in order to make those inside open the doors. Though Hannah wants to help, our core trio is too wary to fall for the gambit. Jill rushes to the upstairs window to scare Ryan off and Martyn comes with her even though he supposed to be badly injured. Meanwhile Jack runs to try to make sure an opening in the warehouse is blocked and he starts singing for some reason?
Crosby and Hannah are now very paranoid about Jack turning on them and Crosby rushes up to the roof in an attempt to escape. Jack, thinking Crosby's going to expose them, rushes after him. This leaves Hannah alone, which Martyn notices, and he heads down to make sure she's alright. Hannah says she's not sure she wants to stay anymore and heads off.
Having gotten Ryan and later Jeremy to pull away from the direct vicinity of the warehouse, Jill comes back down and reaffirms her mistrust in Jack. She says that if he could have done anything substantial, he would have done it already. As if he could hear her comments, Jack abandons his confrontation with Crosby to quickly come down and start hacking again, failing to find the schematics for the collars but managing to implement a virus that will slowly eat away at the terrorists' systems. Even after this happens, Martyn decides that Jill's suspicions are probably founded and that he should get the fuck out of there. He then further escalates the situation by grabbing the laptop and telling Jack that he wants to leave, though he tries to mask that this is a mutual plot between himself and Jill.
In order to prove just how trustworthy he is, Jack pulls a gun on Marty, to which our boy replys by threatening to destroy the laptop by smashing it on the ground. Having not counted on things getting so heated, Jill attempts to deescalate the situation.
As Angelina Kaige shows up here, it is worth noting just how many characters are currently in this thread. I haven't brought up a couple of them since they don't deal with Martyn at all, but when Kaige joins, she brings the character count to 11 in one thread at one time. It's neat to note, however, that one of these 11 is actually Eh-Sun from all the way back at the waterfall (and like at the waterfall, she never directly interacts with our trio). Megami actually mentions her desire to get out of there soon due to the overcrowding.
Anyway, Angelina Kaige shows up and hears them arguing about the computer and decides that she's gotta kill them, tossing a grenade into the warehouse. Jack ducks out of the way and manages to accidentally shoot Martyn as he does, not that it matters much. The bomb goes off and really fucks up both Martyn and Jill.
As they both start to die of their wounds, Martyn thinks about how ironic it is that he was dreading having to stay with his aunt before he was kidnapped. He and Jill manage to both ask that Jack get some measure of vengeance against the terrorists (a motivation that seems absent when he shows up in V1 endgame but whatever) in spite of how their alliance started to break apart moments ago.
Jill turns to Martyn and apologizes, but he assures her that she did nothing that she needed to apologize for. Unfortunately, she dies never hearing this response. Martyn doesn't outlast her very long, dying of his wounds shortly thereafter of his own wounds in a pretty good death, imo.
V1's got no Pregame which means we can jump right into the Island.
Weird little blip here, Martyn's bio says he's 15, but the very first line of his very first post says he's sixteen. This isn't, like, a big criticism of the character since everyone in V1 has weird shit going on, but just reading that part made me feel like I had missed something or just lost my mind for a moment. It isn't the best foot to start off on, regardless.
Martyn spends his first couple of threads not doing a whole lot, mainly because riserugu has trouble getting anyone to interact with him consistently without going inactive.There is one highlight in this period here, though: Martyn manages to come across this Sven kid who's "off his pills", trying to hide out in an open field, and having visions of blood. What a wild guy. He immediately goes inactive, of course.
Martyn's next thread sees him show up in what turns out to be a bit of a chaotic mess involving Jerry Starr, Adam Dodd, Madelaine Shirohara, Cody Jenson, and others. I read a fair bit of this thread during a Dodd readthrough I did and I remember it being annoying to keep track of what the many characters were doing at any given time. At some point in the thread this explicitly becomes a problem for guitarjack, Cody's handler, who loses track of what is happening at one point.
I would continue narrating Martyn's story, but first we're going to need yet another aside focusing on Martyn's Scottishness. You see, our boy Marty speaks with a Scottish accent, which can lead to some of his dialogue being written like this
"Bloody, fuckin', 'ell in a handbasket."
Which isn't the most grating V1 accent around, but it's still kind of annoying.
So yeah, back to the action. Marty ends up wandering up to the Old Warehouse because he's lost, and upon seeing a couple of armed guys, he decides to back away quietly. However, he manages to break a stick and alert them to his presence. The guys turn out to be David Jackson and Adam Dodd though there's some initial suspicion, things generally go off without a hitch. Dodd then suggests that Martyn go to the roof for safety. Martyn obliges and begins his climb up, but stops as a brief firefight between the other two and Jacob Starr occurs (David chasing after him to go and get iced).
At this point, Martyn is enlisted by Dodd to help open up the warehouse, before they get distracted by an arriving Jill Gatling. Since Marty barely known either of them, he just kind of awkwardly stands around and thinks about how isolated he is a random Scottish kid in a game full of American high schoolers. This awkward standing around allows him to hear Amanda Jones and Madelaine Shirohara calling from within the warehouse, which he alerts Jill and Dodd to. They waste a lot of time discussing what to do and then just find a door and open it. The two girls that were trapped inside join up with them and the five all head off together, though Martyn has some suspicions about Adam after hearing his name called over the announcements (and also Cody Jenson is there).
In the next thread, Martyn is the last of the five to arrive at the River and a bunch of shit (Including the rape of Madelaine Shirohara and the her murder along with the murder of Amanda Jones at the hands of Cody Jenson) happens. Marty's just kinda there, nearby. After shit goes down, he of course comes across the bodies along with everyone else and is accordingly shocked.
Dodd has a sad songpost and then runs off. Jill also runs off, but without a songpost. Also frightened and sad and perhaps feeling a bit left out, Martyn also wanders out of the thread. Apparently he actually follows Jill, but that's not clear until the next thread because here for some reason Megami identifies her next location links by the area name rather than the thread name even though they're still linking to the thread...
Marty finally catches up to Jill, but their little talk gets interrupted by a debuting Jack O'Connor, who runs into the scene, introduces himself, and declares that he's not playing. Martyn and Jill decide that he seems alright, so Jack takes the opportunity to ask if the duo happens to have a computer, though he won't tell them why he needs it. Martyn lies and says that neither of them have one. Despite this tension, Jack still ends up joining the duo as they depart for the waterfall and a thread with a friggin jibberish title.
The trio arrive at the waterfall and Jill screams when she screams when she sees a corpse which sidetracks them a bit. Also Kouji Ginsenshi, my idol, my inspiration, is here but he doesn't do much before him and Eh-Sun flee the thread without really interacting with Martyn, Jill, and Jack. The trio decides to take a moment's rest and Martyn changes his tune about Jack, writing a secret note to him informing him about the computer and asking him about an escape plan. Jack writes back and says that he wants to use his hacker skills to bring the whole operation down from the inside. Before the conversation can go further, Michael "Klepto" Suarez shows up and everyone spends a while introducing themselves and getting him up to speed while Martyn and Jack continue their silent convo. Mike almost blows their cover since he's an idiot, but Martyn tells him off.
Also worthy of note is that not only does Martyn speak and think in a shitty accent, he also writes in one. I'd be lying if I said it didn't really hurt his story, considering all the secrecy and note writing going down.
Anyway, Jill has doubts about Martyn and Jack's plan and suggests that they all find shelter at the warehouse (because it was so safe the last time they were there) and Martyn ends up agreeing as he starts to doubts of his own. The trio depart and end up abandoning Mike.
The next and last thread is one of those absurdly long V1 threads with 12 pages, of which Martyn is alive for 11. Onslaught Redux is a long, dense ride folks.
So the trio arrive at the warehouse and immediately encounter two new folks: Luca, whose only character trait is "is a bitch" and Gilbert who's sort of a nervous loser. Luca starts shooting Jill from the warehouse roof which freaks Gilbert out and he rushes over to help Jill, only to bump into Martyn which leads ol' Marty to threaten him. Gilbert quickly caves and they have a tense exchange, kind of ignoring what's going on with Jill and Luca. Luckily, Luca drops down from the roof to get a better shot (I guess?) and Jill manages to kill her by herself.
Jack shows up behind the others and Gilbert tries to explain what happened, but also panics, causing him to randomly and accidentally fire his gun into the nearby undergrowth. This freaks out Jason Andrews, who was just sitting around, waiting to attack all four students, so he returns fire at the whole group, killing Gilbert. Luckily, Dodd shows up out of nowhere and starts beating the shit out of Jason, which leads to a quick scuffle where Dodd ends up killing him pretty handily. Jack is weirdly unsettled by this even though he was fine with Jill killing Luca and acknowledged the Jason was likely a player, but Jason did say "Please don't" before getting his head blown off and Jack knew him from baseball, so whatever. Jack calls for a truce and Dodd, Jill, and Martyn have a quick catch-up. Martyn is overall less phased by the crazy shit that's just happened than either of his allies, though it is a bit less personal for him.
Soon, Jack and Martyn head inside to set up the laptop while Jill continues talking to Dodd before he heads off again. Apparently Martyn's laptop not only has power, but also has access to the internet? Whatever. Jack covers up the cameras with clothes from the bodies outside, in order to keep stuff secret, and then Marty hands things over to him.
Martyn and Jill just kind of stand around while they wait for Jack to use his super hacker powers. While he's waiting, Martyn starts to get a bit of development, thinking about how much he misses the family that he used to resent. Jack gets up and reveals that he's only fucked with the cameras a bit to test the waters, not wanting to expose them until later in the game. Via notes, the Jack suggests that he can probably get the three of them out of the game, but no others. Martyn is, once again, fine with this, but Jill is uncomfortable because she had wanted to bring Dodd along. As Jack steps back into the warehouse, Jill says that she doesn't trust him and that Martyn should keep a close eye on him, but ol' Marty doesn't take it too seriously.
Martyn takes first watch and is quickly attacked by a newly arriving Lucinda Garnett. She stabs him in the back and gives him a slash in his neck, while he shoots her in the eye before she runs off. Jill and Jack quickly rush outside and attend to him. Martyn tries to downplay his injuries, but he's in pretty bad shape. Jack starts to fix up his wounds just in time for Sidney Crosby to show up by running headlong into the warehouse wall. Jack decides that he'll deal with the newcomer, leaving Jill to attend to Martyn's needs.
Yet another person, a girl named Hannah, also shows up and pulls a gun on the group. However, Jill and Jack just tell her that there's four of them and one of her and that she should drop her weapon. She complies immediately and apologizes, saying she was just scared. Martyn tries to speak up, but can't really speak at the moment. Hannah asks if she can stay with them to which Jill and Jack reply with an emphatic no. It is then that Martyn finally summons his strength and stands up, becoming a bit delirious in the process as he tells Jack and Jill that they are being too harsh on the girl, that he thinks Jill is cute, and that hockey's the "stick and round thing game." Crosby also starts in on Jill for being too harsh about Hannah, but is far more of an abrasive douche about it. Though Jill can handle Crosby verbally, she gets flustered by Martyn's comments and decides that they should all just head inside, as long as Hannah gives up her weapon (which she does).
Jack's peeved that Jill has accepted Hannah, but his motivation for doing so abruptly changes to being about her being dead weight or something, rather than the reasonable problem of her having threatened them. Martyn is brought to a smaller office room in the back of the warehouse where Jill soon joins him. He flirts with her a little, but they soon turn toward more pressing topics, such as the idea of perhaps tampering with the collars on some of the corpses. They're interrupted by the Eighth Announcement, which reveals that Sidney has killed someone. Jack flips his shit, which further alienates those in the warehouse with him and Sidney doesn't help things much by explaining it was an accident, but also threatening to expose their hacking plans if Jack tries to kick him out.
This is where the thread starts to get really convoluted. Jeremy Torres, his brother Ryan, and Clare Shepard arrive with the apparent goal of luring the people inside of the people in the warehouse out so that they can take their weapons, but not kill them. To this end, Ryan runs up to the warehouse and yells that he's being attacked in order to make those inside open the doors. Though Hannah wants to help, our core trio is too wary to fall for the gambit. Jill rushes to the upstairs window to scare Ryan off and Martyn comes with her even though he supposed to be badly injured. Meanwhile Jack runs to try to make sure an opening in the warehouse is blocked and he starts singing for some reason?
Crosby and Hannah are now very paranoid about Jack turning on them and Crosby rushes up to the roof in an attempt to escape. Jack, thinking Crosby's going to expose them, rushes after him. This leaves Hannah alone, which Martyn notices, and he heads down to make sure she's alright. Hannah says she's not sure she wants to stay anymore and heads off.
Having gotten Ryan and later Jeremy to pull away from the direct vicinity of the warehouse, Jill comes back down and reaffirms her mistrust in Jack. She says that if he could have done anything substantial, he would have done it already. As if he could hear her comments, Jack abandons his confrontation with Crosby to quickly come down and start hacking again, failing to find the schematics for the collars but managing to implement a virus that will slowly eat away at the terrorists' systems. Even after this happens, Martyn decides that Jill's suspicions are probably founded and that he should get the fuck out of there. He then further escalates the situation by grabbing the laptop and telling Jack that he wants to leave, though he tries to mask that this is a mutual plot between himself and Jill.
In order to prove just how trustworthy he is, Jack pulls a gun on Marty, to which our boy replys by threatening to destroy the laptop by smashing it on the ground. Having not counted on things getting so heated, Jill attempts to deescalate the situation.
As Angelina Kaige shows up here, it is worth noting just how many characters are currently in this thread. I haven't brought up a couple of them since they don't deal with Martyn at all, but when Kaige joins, she brings the character count to 11 in one thread at one time. It's neat to note, however, that one of these 11 is actually Eh-Sun from all the way back at the waterfall (and like at the waterfall, she never directly interacts with our trio). Megami actually mentions her desire to get out of there soon due to the overcrowding.
Anyway, Angelina Kaige shows up and hears them arguing about the computer and decides that she's gotta kill them, tossing a grenade into the warehouse. Jack ducks out of the way and manages to accidentally shoot Martyn as he does, not that it matters much. The bomb goes off and really fucks up both Martyn and Jill.
As they both start to die of their wounds, Martyn thinks about how ironic it is that he was dreading having to stay with his aunt before he was kidnapped. He and Jill manage to both ask that Jack get some measure of vengeance against the terrorists (a motivation that seems absent when he shows up in V1 endgame but whatever) in spite of how their alliance started to break apart moments ago.
Jill turns to Martyn and apologizes, but he assures her that she did nothing that she needed to apologize for. Unfortunately, she dies never hearing this response. Martyn doesn't outlast her very long, dying of his wounds shortly thereafter of his own wounds in a pretty good death, imo.
So, would I recommend Martyn Ferdinand? I guess so. He's got some troubles and his story really doesn't get going until "Today's The Day, I Pray That We Make It Through". I'd also say that you can get his whole story by reading Jill Gatling instead, who I perceive to be a more well-realized character overall. Still, his story is an important part of that whole Jack O'Connor virus thing that apparently also showed up in V3 somehow. Recommended!
(Original post by Ruggahissy with few alterations, mostly due to spoilers being finicky.)
Sometimes I make mistakes.
MADELAINE SHIROHARA
FINAL THOUGHTS
Holy jesus, I can't believe the river thread is longer than Lord of the Flies (Not an exaggeration, we word counted it and it's almost a full third longer than Lord of the Flies). Oh, Madelaine. I said it already but I guess I can see how at the time of V1, since she's written competently and with some style and approaches some nice bonds she would be a big deal. For the time, she's pretty impressive and if you took her story from before "Though We May Not Survive It" in isolation I'd say she's decent. Perhaps nothing special, but nothing particularly offensive and someone who could be dropped into any version.
However....
"Though We May Not Survive It" does happen and her meeting with Nanami is what starts her long slide downward. Readers don't like being told how much you should love a character or how great they are and that's all Nanami is. Following this kill Madelaine sucks all action towards her and her motivations and views become wobbly and change frequently. There's a bit of a fascinating switch where Madelaine becomes very cruel and dismissive, but the narrative wants to have its cake and eat it too, telling us that she's still the hope and light. I feel like Makaze wanted to experiment with the effects of trauma, but also didn't want anyone to think Madelaine was anything but the best, most good hearted character around. A bit Mary Sue-ish following the introduction of Nanami. By the time she's dead Dodd laments her death, saying she was the hope and the kindness and heart of their group but in the same thread she says she'll kill or play to save the people she likes. I don't know how to reconcile those two different versions of Madelaine that Madelaine tries to sell us.
Recommend? Uhhhhhhh, mmmmm no. I would instead recommend Hawley who may be the best V1 character I've read so far. All the best Madelaine moments come from Hawley so that will showcase the best of her, and you don't have to read an empty rape scene that contributes nothing to the character's story.
Sometimes I make mistakes.
MADELAINE SHIROHARA
Spoiler!
I wrote the first part of this but it got eated. Madelaine's profile is ok, she has a younger sister named Miriam and two parents that behave like irresponsible teenagers so Madelaine has to run their household and tell everyone what to do.
Onto the island, she wakes up and immediately runs into Amanda. They know each other from math class, but don't talk much. Amanda is also daughter of the vice president and she spends a lot of time hinting about that but no one asks so she has to come out and say it. UNFORTUNATELY FOR US ALL, David Jacks walks up and decides for the good of America he must protect Amanda and Madelaine I guess if he has time.
Out of the woods walks Heather Pendergast and if you have seen my Heather writeup you know that David GMs an innocent girl who has voluntarily disarmed herself into being shot14 times and steals her stuff. That's some good hero-ing there, chief!
Amanda and Madelaine sortta scold him after the fact and then they walk across a field to a house where Amanda and Madelaine quietly discuss plans to ditch David.
David ditch count: 1
Amanda has told Maddy that she hopes to find her crush Adam Dodd. Madelaine is like "Oh wow, hope you find him." This is in stark contrast to actual pure angel Jeremy who vows immediately to help a stranger find his brother in his first thread.
The group comes upon a cabin and there's a boy outside. Amanda hides in the bushes and Madelaine and Adam Dodd have a song and dance that's pretty tiresome that's like "I'm looking for Adam Dodd" "Who is looking for him?" "Madelaine." "Well, maybe I know where he is" ect. til Amanda runs out and everyone is happy, yay.
[TWO MONTH BREAK]
Ugh ok I'm back
So Hawley decides while Amanda and Dodd have a little date to talk to Madelaine because I'd chose her over David as well. He asks her name, saying they should know one another if they are to be allies.
She is extremely doubtful that anyone can be allies in the situation. They talk, she goes outside in the rain, Hawley tells her she's gonna get sick like that.
She's annoyed that he's treating her like a kid because back home she's the one that has to treat everyone that way as her little sister is a child and her parents are irresponsible. Madelaine doesn't like it when someone talks to her the way she talks to them. CHARACTER.
Madelaine looks at a picture of her family in a diary and reinforces that they are all happy go-lucky and she's a bit more serious and says if she'd have known about death island in her future she might have relaxed a little more.
But then River runs out of the house to a danger zone and explodes. Madelaine and Hawley are in shock, Dodd is devastated, Amanda wants to comfort him and David doesn't care. Also Dodd tells the group his good friend Adam Sandler phoned him and told them to meet him at the lighthouse because he has an escape plan.
David says it may be a trap so they should ignore the call. Hate.
Madelaine is sneezing and coughing, I guess Hawley was right. Also she's still freaked out about River. She doesn't really want to move because she doesn't feel good. Aw, pobresita.
David says that maybe they should just consider killing people and Madelaine has a speech about how killing is giving in to the terrorists and not worth the toll it would take on them as people [REMEMBER FOR LATER]. She vows never to kill, but also to stay with Amanda no matter what and for some reason reminds David of his vow to also protect Amanda. (Hey, maybe you don't want David in the Amanda protection team).
A summary:
David: Maybe we kill people? Just a suggestion.
Madelaine: I'll never kill! Killing would mean that we've given in to the terrorist's demands. It's not worth it to sacrifice our humanity just at a slim chance to win this game!
Hawley: I've.....already killed. I regret what I've done and I can't take it back but...here, Madelaine, take this medicine. I hope that maybe I can make up for what I have done.
Madelaine: Hawley, though you've done bad things, the fact that you want to reform and take the right path even now means you're strong : ) . You're not bad, you're human.
David: YEAH WELL, HAWLEY HAS ADMITTED HE'S WEAK BY PLAYING SO WE BETTER FUCKING LEAVE
Me: Why are you like this?
Also, what's that Future!Madelaine?
Devi walks up to ask for shelter and David pulls out his gun. Bitch, run. It's not worth it.
Hawley and Madelaine have a moment as he gives her medicine and says that he wants to live because he's never met his mother. He's afraid of being alone and wants to stay with them. I ship them? She's blushing while he gives her medicine. Minus 1 point to Madelaine for seeing David about to shoot another innocent girl and not giving a shit though.
While he is dealing with Devi, Amanda, Madelaine and Hawley try to quietly escape. I guess Devi is just the price they are willing to pay to get away from David. Alas, as soon as they make it outside the house he teleports to be outside with them when he was just at the front door talking to Devi. He GMs her into talking to no one in order to make sure the good characters don't escape him.
David ditch count: 2
Everyone is upset they did not escape David. Also Marcus is here now too. Madelaine tells them that she intends to die on the island. Amanda tells her not to think like that, Hawley suggests they move to a less open area to look for Dodd. Everyone except David decides they should go to the lighthouse and they leave before David can throw in his two cents.
END OF THREAD THANK GOD
Hawley hears a weird noise. Madelaine goes to check it out and it's some dude singing and chopping a body with an axe.
He comes out all crazy having just killed a kid named Jimmy and Hawley wants to leave. Marcus wants to fight. Hawley thinks that if they fight the axe boy (Blaine) they risk injuring a party member. Madelaine takes out her gun and threatens to shoot Blaine.
They decide to leave and Madelaine apologizes for scaring Blaine. WHY? HE JUST AXED SOMEONE IN THE FACE TO DEATH
Madelaine wrote:
"Who am I to point fingers at now? she thought sullenly. After all...I just pointed a gun at someone, looking at them as though they were a wooden target, unable to feel happiness, fear, anger, or pain."
NO YOU CAN YOU SEE BECAUSE YOU DID NOT MURDER A PERSON. Also foreshadow of her not giving a fuck about people dying later.
Sidenote: I don't like Madelaine's monologue talk. When she's allowed to talk for too long uninterrupted the dialogue doesn't sound like how humans talk. Sounds like dialogue from a not very good anime
Marcus is upset they are letting a murderer just walk away. Fair. Madelaine says that though it's possible he'll go kill someone, she was thinking selfishly about not wanting to risk a fight. Also fair. She says in the moment she pointed the gun at him she didn't think of him as human, but if she did kill anyone she couldn't face her family.
Hawley tells Amanda and Madelaine that his goal is to help the people who prove that they are good to get off the island, which is why he'll stay with them. Nice.
Madelaine says that she doesn't feel comfortable trusting so many people but that it's part of what's helping her get through this. But now she also wants to survive? Before she didn't. I'll say that it's Hawley's influence that's changed her mind.
NEXT THERAD
The gang come up to the clinic which has inside a scared and injured Elise. A scared, unarmed young girl begging for safety? DAVID KILL!
He tells her to come out or he'll open fire. She repeats that her legs are injured, she can't walk. He tells her he doesn't give a shit and she better get her ass out of that room or he'll kill her, broken legs or not.
Dude, come on. I'm ready to downgrade Hawley and Madelaine if they let this slide.
Elise sighs and crawls across the floor to the door to avoid being shot. Well, Madelaine tells him he's being a jerk and also makes a joke about his small dick, so it's not a total loss.Elise has crawled to the door and Madelaine is helping her up and snapping at the others to help too. Elise is like "Hi yeah, someone shot me in the legs. So are you gonna kill me now?" Elise's got jokes too! So Madelaine and Hawley help Elsie.
Meanwhile:
Amanda tells David to be less of a fucking dick, but she says it nice. He says he'll try.
Hawley is doctoring up Elise, Madelaine has gone to search the area and suddenly JACOB, STEVAN AND PERI SHOW UP AND I NO LONGER KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING. I can't tell who is talking to who out of this trio. Oh well.David hears the talking and warns the group.
Amanda: "FUCK! It's Jacob..." she hissed to Madelaine and Hawley.
I know that feel.
Madelaine runs inside while David goes out to fight, the only thing he's really ever wanted to do.
A shoot out happens between David, Stevan, Peri and Jacob. I can't tell what's happening besides a lot of shooting with no one actually getting shot. Also I don't care what happens to any of them.
MADELAINE HAS FOUND A BACK DOOR OUT OF THE HOSPITAL. Let's see if the group can finally escape David. Oh no, Amanda's been hit in the leg which reminds David that Amanda is there. Amanda is like "NO, I'M FINE GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING."
David ditch count: 3
All of them escape, including Marcus who has teleported once again and somehow David even though he was shooting people. Curses.
Now we've made it
I stand before the precipice
No second thoughts, no backward glances
The games we've played till now are at an end
No second thoughts. I've decided.
Past the point of no return. No going back now!
Our passion-play has now, at last, begun
Past all thought of right or wrong!
How long should we two wait before we're one?
When will the blood begin to race?
The sleeping bud burst into blood?
When will the flames, at last, CONSUMEEEEE USSSSS?
THE FINAL TRESHOLD
THE BRIDGE IS CROSSED
ONWARD TO: THOUGH WE MAY NOT SURVIVE IT....
Madelaine is sweating and dying from running full tilt away from the gun battle. She looks back to take stock and see if everyone is with them-
Jacob is now with them in addition to David
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjda8O-lYgE
Madelaine collapses, Hawley collapses next to her and Amanda collapses between them. Aw. Jacob and David seem to be doing peachy and Hawley is upset they are still with them. Jacob is like "I'm good now!" David is like "C'moooooon"
Amanda grabs a gun that Jacob dropped and threatens to kill Jacob since he tried to kill Dodd. Hawley tells David to shut the fuck up.
Mandelaine tells everyone to freeze. She doesn't want them killing, but also tells Jacob to get away from them and if David has a problem he can leave too (they have been trying to escape David for so long).
David ditch count 3
Jacob grabs the gun out of Amanda's hands and sadly asks David if he'll stay with them and David sadly says yes (NOOOOOOOO).
An OOC battle breaks out since Jacob took the gun with Amanda without her permission.
Dodd lets it go and Amanda is distraught that she almost shot someone and cries on Madelaine. Madelaine hugs her as she cries.
OOC Swoosh asks what became of Elise. Makaze says Madelaine was only aiming to get her friends out. Ouch, guess Elise isn't a friend.
The terrorists come on reading erotica! Except then Danya takes over and says they'll be sent to the island.
Our trio is sutibly freaked out except David who says if they can beat the terrorists then they can get them to tell the kids how to take the collars off. Hawley is doubtful the kids can beat military trained combatants.
He instead goes back to helping Amanda. But then Madelaine realizes she's also been shot or at least grazed on the shoulder. It's bleeding quite a bit.
Hawley tells her to stay calm and asks her about her life to distract her while he gets supplies for the wound. She talks about her writing and her favorite noodle dish and how her family was so dependent on her that she has no idea what they'll do without her. He needs her to take off the shirt so he can get to the wound and she does, with both a bit embarrassed but neither remarking on it.
Hawley reveals that he hoped to become a doctor like his parents. The bullet is still in her but he says it's better to leave it be than to try to dig it out unless it really starts to bother her, but that it's not a good option.This is all very nice stuff that lets us know more about each character while building their bond naturally.
DAVID EXPLODES THE COLLAR OF A DEAD PERSON AND ALL HE HAS IS A CUT. Expert opinion on this is some of his fingers should be blown off.
Hawley patches up everyone and Amanda requests some time for girl talk, telling Hawley and David to make conversation in the meantime. This should be good, but I'm also afraid that Amanda and Madelaine will consider Hawley a sacrifice and try to escape David again.
Marcus has finally made it out of wherever he was and collapses. They tell him to go up the road and visit Nurse Hawley, while hoping no one has followed him.
OH BUT SOMEONE HAS.
Amanda talks about how Adam is her true love and she only trusts her emotions with Madelaine. Madelaine can't understand quite since she's never felt romantic about anyone.
Oh Madelaine says that their friendship still exists and it's worth holding on to and fighting for even though their chances are slim. Blaine is sneaking up on the girls, but they hear him because he's singing the lyrics to his song post. If only he'd been quiet he could have gotten the drop on them.
He starts talking about how Madelaine pointed a gun at him and didn't wanna be his friend and all his other friends fell asleep (he killed them) so she must die. She counters his axe with the tire iron and tells Amanda to run for Hawley and David. But that injured leg isn't helping and he runs to kill Amanda but THEN ADAM DODD.
He shoots Blaine in his first kill. History in the making. Adam breaks down and it's pretty good. Good job, V1 Dodd.
Madelaine is in a shock state and is only brought back once Dodd starts to weep. She feels bad that Dodd has taken on the burden of killing that she would have had to in order to save Amanda.
Hawley's back from his walk alone. Did he finally manage to shake David? OH NO HE'S EVIL NOW, WHY? : (
Adam is like "Lol, what?" and Hawley is like "Friendship is weakness, I made a mistake, there is no such thing as true friends. I gotta kill you" and Madelaine steps in front of Dodd and is like "What about all the times you helped us? I believe in friendship and you!"
But then a new character joins the scene named Callum! He's looking for his imaginary friend Beth and decides that because she is in trouble, Madelaine is Beth so he'll save her. It looks like Madelaine is winning over Hawley who says he's afraid and doesn't want to die because he trusted the wrong people, but then Callum tackles him.
Madelaine thinks that even though he's behaving irrationally she still trusts him and turns her gun on Callum, saying he was wrong to rush Hawley. Sure, ok, but to an outside observer it did look like he was about to shoot you.
Hawley says that when he heard the gun shots from the Blaine scuffle he assumed someone had killed the girls and felt like it was his fault if anything bad happened because he left clearly injured girls alone. To cope he tried to convince himself they were never his real friends in order to prepare for when Dodd would blame him for their deaths.
Interesting.
Callum talks to a second imaginary friend : I
Hawley begins tending to the arm wound Dodd got in his Blaine fight and thinks about how he ditched David.
Marcus has come back and he's fucked up. Amanda goes to help him while Hawley pumps Dodd full of m o r p h I n e so he can sew his arm up.
David's found them again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtBfGvzzlwM
Madelaine is promoted to nurse as Hawley tells her how to take care of Marcus while he sews up the Doddster. I'm not exactly sure what's happened to Marcus but he's been whipped pretty badly. A nice character moment here from Hawley who inwardly freaks out, not sure if he can tackle such extensive wounds and feeling pressured that at 15 these people are counting on him to save this person.
Well another girl comes upon them wearing the same uniform from Madelaine's old school in Japan. One might assume that they could know each other. David?
At this point I'm surprised David has not threatened me for being a girl with no weapon.
Marcus understands that shooting a crying girl on the floor is bad PR at the very least. Amanda tells him to STOP TRYING TO KILL UNARMED GIRLS LOOKING FOR HELP.
Uh, Nanami calls Madelaine "Shirohara-san" which I think isn't right? I mean, Madelaine says they are childhood friends and even "best friend." Maybe this is intentional to show us that Nanami doesn't really consider them to be that close or Nanami thinks of Madelaine as superior.
I instantly like Nanami. She's not happy to see Madelaine, but she doesn't have the heart to say so. She lies, saying she meant to write her, thinking that lies are just easier sometimes rather than hurting people with the truth.
Uh oh. I think we're reaching a Madelaine turning point.
So up until this point I would say I characterize Madelaine as "okay" learning a bit towards "good." She's not given a ton of introspection and some of her moments come across as sort of Saturday morning cartoon in how much she talks about friendship, but she has a really cute relationship to Hawley which actually challenged her a bit because he has a past that goes against her ideals. She's shown to be pragmatic sometimes too, having to chose to save her immediate friends rather than extend herself by trying to help more people (like leaving Elsie in the dust). Now and then she's got a good character moment.
By modern standards she wouldn't be a revelation, but for V1 she's solid enough. But now we start to see some cracks....
As mentioned in the Toben review of Nanami, Madelaine comforts Nanami and remembers a time that she comforted her in the past, but never actually asked her what was wrong, and then says Nanami gets upset over "petty things." How do you know if you never asked?
Madelaine assures her that all of them will get out and Nanami asks, shocked, if she trusts these strangers. When Madelaine says she trusts them with her life, Nanami rightly points out that David was about to shoot her. Nanami wants to them to leave together but Madelaine tells her she's being silly.
Nanami is aghast that Madelaine would choose these strangers over her best friend, but also thinks that because Madelaine is so self-sacrificing it's good to have her around because she'll protect her at the cost of her own life. Mmmm okay. Nanami and Madelaine are written by the same person so, this looks to be a way to reinforce how kind Madelaine is in a quick way.
Adam Dodd doesn't like the fact that Nanami wants to leave so in his morphine craze he calls Nanami a "whiny bitch" and tells her to "shut the fuck up." Yeah, that's gonna win her over for sure. He also tells her that he killed a man and that Madelaine is for sure not an Asian sex slave.
I'm sure that Dodd meant for Dodd to sound totally crazy here and the opposite of comforting, but it kind of works against Makaze's efforts to paint Nanami as unreasonable for wanting to leave. Dodd essentially says that if she leaves they'll follow.
Nanami stands there horrified and crying, Amanda is horrified and mad, Madelaine is horrified and slaps him one good. Nanami remembers some other times in the past when Madelaine was the best and tells us how Madelaine always stands up for her. Er, okay. Show don't tell ect. She thinks Dodd has seen through her cunning manipulation (I think he's just tripping) and she's resentful that she is dependent on Madelaine which also comes across as showing us how great Madelaine is.
Also as mentioned by Toben, she escalates the situation to physical violence by slapping Dodd when it probably could have been resolved more easily without violence given that he's just kind of rambling while high. Hawley basically says all this, telling Madelaine that he's just drugged up and there's no reason to get violent.
Madelaine doesn't like that everyone told her she needs to cool it and she sulks, rather than reflect. This does call back to her not liking being talked down to since she's used to being the one acting as the parent. It's a bit like when she was resentful of Hawley correctly saying she shouldn't be out in the cold despite her talking down to him earlier.
All this is cool, but Nanami's accounts of Madelaine don't betray any of that, nor is Madelaine self-aware of this problem. Her not being self-aware doesn't bother me, but the narrative nor Nanami, a second party, are either.
AFTER ALL THIS, SHE INTRODUCES NANAMI TO THE GROUP.
Best. Friends.
Random thought: Should Madaline and Nanami be speaking in Japanese? Perhaps not all the time but at the very least when Nanami is trying to convince Madelaine to leave the group within earshot of the group?
Madelaine tells her that they are staying with the group and that Nanami would like them if she opens up. Nanami doesn't like having decisions made for her. This is actually in character though since Madelaine is used to making decisions for people unilaterally. She doesn't consider Nanami's feelings in the decision-making, but I think she always just does what she things is right just using her own perspective.
The thing I don't know is if we're supposed to take Nanami's anecdotes about Madeline being kind and angelic at face value and think "Ok yeah, she's the best" or if those memories are just coated in Nanami's bitterness and her own perception is remembering Madelaine as more angelic than she really is.
I can't..........tell..........
If it is that she has a flaw of being thoughtless because her childhood of having to make the adult decisions for her family have gotten used to her thinking she knows what's best for everyone without truly considering their point of view and Nanami's resentment of that treatment carrying over to her has made her falsely paint a more grand picture of Madelaine.....it might be too subtle? Is that it though?
"But now, all Nanami could think about was how much she resented Shirohara-san at that moment, just because she was right. She was always right."
IS she always right? Or does Nanami just THINK she's always right because she's resentful? She also thinks about how Madelaine is scary but also makes friends with everyone. Laying it on a bit thick.
Did I say thick?
THICC
"And then there was you, Shirohara-san. You were always really cool, even as a grade school student. No one ever saw you crying, and you always looked after everyone else. Even the teachers thought you were special, because you were always good with words, writing, that sort of thing.... Everyone really admired you, you know?"
We're running into issues of author intent here as I try to untangle this because Toben pointed me to a character trivia thread wherein Makaze says:
Well Nanami shoots Madelaine, everyone comes running and Nanami is pretty much in a corner with Madelaine as a hostage. She says that all throughout their friendship she has always resented Madelaine smothering her, pitying her, telling her what to do.
Uh, Madelaine doesn't consider any of this. Man, it is so hard to get her to consider other points of view that are not her, even when it comes to her best friend. She's hurt that the friendship was based on a lie. Ok.
My patience is wearing thin right now at page 10 of 17 of this thread.
Dodd tries to goad Nanami into paying attention to him instead of Madelaine, which is brave and selfless. See, Madelaine? This works.....until David tries to shoot the gun out of Nanami's hand and she gets upset and shoots Madelaine, grazing her cheek.
Nanami has taken considerable verbal abuse so she decides she'll prove her strength instead by killing the crowd, taking aim at Amanda. Madelaine shoots her and then screams for help. David kicks a dying girl in the ribs. Stay classy.
Madelaine apologies for never realizing her friend was unhappy and for discouraging for standing up for herself, telling her such behavior was "troublesome." Better late than never. Nanami tries to apologize for the attempted murder, but dies first. Harsh. Silver lining: Dodd heard it and tries to tell the others.
Madelaine goes catatonic due to shooting her friend and Dodd is now the cheerleader of the group, telling them they can make it, they have to keep moving.
Amanda, Dodd and Hawley awkwardly cough in the distance. As she is basically catatonic we spend a lot of time being locked in her brain. She's not interacting with anyone much, forcing people to cater to her while not giving back anything.
Madelaine can hear Amanda's pleas to snap out of her catatonia, but just isn't talking to her. WHY? Holy shit, this thread is longer than Catcher in the Rye and she's not interacting with anyone so I'm locked in her brain.
Madelaine for the rest of the thread:
If I were Hawley or Dodd I'd throw her over Marcus's shoulder like a sack of potatoes and keep moving.
Amanda has an actually really nice plea to Madelaine about how they could have been friends at home and how she needs her. Madelaine hears it and smiles but STILL DOESN'T RESPOND DEAR JESUS.
Oh no, we've switched to SOTF: Oregon trail as one of our party members has fallen ill.
GuitarJack wrote:
SPEEDIN' UP THE PACE SO I DON'T DIE HERE
The J-crew show up (Jeremy, Heather, Glenn and Fred) and it's like:
Heather: you shot me and stole my gun. Give it back!
David: you're a player, no.
Heather: I shot a guy who tried to rape me and another crazy dude who wanted to murder me because he said I was a witch
David: bitch I don't care, you can have it back when you take it from my cold dead hands
Heather: ok (fires shots)
David: (fires shots)
Adam: Oh no a player!
Madelaine: I have to protect my friends! (Shoots at Heather)
Dodd gets a pass here but Madelaine was around to see David steal from and assault Heather the first time. Let's check in on how Madelaine is doing.
"The sight of Heather being shot down like that...did not seem to have much of an effect of Madelaine now for some reason.
This puzzled her mildly, and she wondered vaguely what was up with her all of a sudden, why she was not feeling anything. Her confusion increased as she felt herself remaining her calm while David pressed the barrel of his gun against Heather's forehead. Though for some reason...she felt a flicker of enjoyment as the crippled girl had cowered helplessly in front of David. It appalled her...and almost excited her at the same time..."
She's on the straight and narrow.
David takes the opportunity to tell Amanda he loves her while Jeremy and Fred are screaming over a passed out Heather, who they then rush to the hospital. Then Hawley succumbs to his wounds and dies in a touching scene where he says that he's always felt alone and realized too late he had true friends.
UGH NO HE WAS MY FAVORITE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LVxDcOfF5E
Hawley's death snaps Madelaine into talking again and she seems upset but not super upset? Oh and Marcus is dead so we shoot him and leave despite Amanda's protests (though she admits he's a vegetable at this point). Madelaine decides she's going to die in this place, but she will give her all to protect her friends, even if this means killing someone or playing. STRAIGHT AND NARROW.
IT'S OVER AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH-
Ok we go to the warehouse, Jacob locks Amanda, Cody and Madelaine in the warehouse for ????? reasons I guess. Cody decides to mac on Amanda and forcibly kisses her to which Madelaine brains him in the head with a tire iron. They make their escape once Adam, David and friendspry the doors open.....
Last thread. Let's fucking rock
DAVID DITCH COUNT: 5, YOU DID IT GUYS!
Dodd explains the kills to his name to newcomers Jill, Martyn and Chance and Madelaine has this to say
Madelaine is not in any way a messiah figure of goodness, hope and light, but she is kind of fascinating as someone who kind of took up that mantle in a superficial way to end up at the end like "Fuck hope, fuck this, fuck friendship : ) "
Her complete disillusion in friendship at this point makes it almost worth having sat through all her friendship speeches in the first few threads. I feel like maybe it's not a conscious decision from the writer because a moment later when talking to Chance she says she trusts the group, even though the only members she's been with for a long time are Adam and Amanda (Martyn and Jill have only now joined up).
Well, as you may know by now Cody catches up to them and grabs Madelaine while she's looking at the bodies of her friends (they are back at the river). He chokes her to unconsciousness, binds her hands and tells her if she does not cooperate or if she screams he'll kill her and proceeds to undress her.
I have * thoughts .* Oh boy. Oh jeez. Okay, I do realize that this was 12 years ago and attitudes towards sexual assault have changed quite a bit so part of this is likely a product of it's time but.....jeez. This is obviously a horrible attitude to have towards victims of sexual assault and I guess Madelaine thinks that only girls that "deserve it" get raped. I don't know how this meshes with her personality traits of being nurturing and caring but it doesn't speak well of her.
This is also uhhhh ermmm uhh
TLDR: Cody is biting her a lot and head butting her to inflict damage while raping her. The rape is a bit secondary because the violence gets a lot more focus and pretty much doesn't go into the nitty gritty of the sexual act. I get the feeling that we're just meant to watch her suffer as much as possible. Case in point the narrative directly tells you:
"This is something that no one should have to go through."
Uh, thanks? I kind of already thought that.
"Here she was, first being coerced into submission, then finding herself being violated and tortured in just about one of the worse ways imaginable."
don't tell ect.
He rips her throat out with his teeth after climax and she starts to die of blood loss.
Onto the island, she wakes up and immediately runs into Amanda. They know each other from math class, but don't talk much. Amanda is also daughter of the vice president and she spends a lot of time hinting about that but no one asks so she has to come out and say it. UNFORTUNATELY FOR US ALL, David Jacks walks up and decides for the good of America he must protect Amanda and Madelaine I guess if he has time.
Out of the woods walks Heather Pendergast and if you have seen my Heather writeup you know that David GMs an innocent girl who has voluntarily disarmed herself into being shot14 times and steals her stuff. That's some good hero-ing there, chief!
Amanda and Madelaine sortta scold him after the fact and then they walk across a field to a house where Amanda and Madelaine quietly discuss plans to ditch David.
David ditch count: 1
Amanda has told Maddy that she hopes to find her crush Adam Dodd. Madelaine is like "Oh wow, hope you find him." This is in stark contrast to actual pure angel Jeremy who vows immediately to help a stranger find his brother in his first thread.
The group comes upon a cabin and there's a boy outside. Amanda hides in the bushes and Madelaine and Adam Dodd have a song and dance that's pretty tiresome that's like "I'm looking for Adam Dodd" "Who is looking for him?" "Madelaine." "Well, maybe I know where he is" ect. til Amanda runs out and everyone is happy, yay.
[TWO MONTH BREAK]
Ugh ok I'm back
So Hawley decides while Amanda and Dodd have a little date to talk to Madelaine because I'd chose her over David as well. He asks her name, saying they should know one another if they are to be allies.
She is extremely doubtful that anyone can be allies in the situation. They talk, she goes outside in the rain, Hawley tells her she's gonna get sick like that.
She's annoyed that he's treating her like a kid because back home she's the one that has to treat everyone that way as her little sister is a child and her parents are irresponsible. Madelaine doesn't like it when someone talks to her the way she talks to them. CHARACTER.
Madelaine looks at a picture of her family in a diary and reinforces that they are all happy go-lucky and she's a bit more serious and says if she'd have known about death island in her future she might have relaxed a little more.
But then River runs out of the house to a danger zone and explodes. Madelaine and Hawley are in shock, Dodd is devastated, Amanda wants to comfort him and David doesn't care. Also Dodd tells the group his good friend Adam Sandler phoned him and told them to meet him at the lighthouse because he has an escape plan.
David says it may be a trap so they should ignore the call. Hate.
Madelaine is sneezing and coughing, I guess Hawley was right. Also she's still freaked out about River. She doesn't really want to move because she doesn't feel good. Aw, pobresita.
David says that maybe they should just consider killing people and Madelaine has a speech about how killing is giving in to the terrorists and not worth the toll it would take on them as people [REMEMBER FOR LATER]. She vows never to kill, but also to stay with Amanda no matter what and for some reason reminds David of his vow to also protect Amanda. (Hey, maybe you don't want David in the Amanda protection team).
A summary:
David: Maybe we kill people? Just a suggestion.
Madelaine: I'll never kill! Killing would mean that we've given in to the terrorist's demands. It's not worth it to sacrifice our humanity just at a slim chance to win this game!
Hawley: I've.....already killed. I regret what I've done and I can't take it back but...here, Madelaine, take this medicine. I hope that maybe I can make up for what I have done.
Madelaine: Hawley, though you've done bad things, the fact that you want to reform and take the right path even now means you're strong : ) . You're not bad, you're human.
David: YEAH WELL, HAWLEY HAS ADMITTED HE'S WEAK BY PLAYING SO WE BETTER FUCKING LEAVE
Me: Why are you like this?
Also, what's that Future!Madelaine?
/the future"The thing is, these kinds of circumstances, they tend to bring out the absolute worst in people. It's not a sin or anything...it's just the instinct to survive, something that can't be helped anymore..."
Devi walks up to ask for shelter and David pulls out his gun. Bitch, run. It's not worth it.
Hawley and Madelaine have a moment as he gives her medicine and says that he wants to live because he's never met his mother. He's afraid of being alone and wants to stay with them. I ship them? She's blushing while he gives her medicine. Minus 1 point to Madelaine for seeing David about to shoot another innocent girl and not giving a shit though.
While he is dealing with Devi, Amanda, Madelaine and Hawley try to quietly escape. I guess Devi is just the price they are willing to pay to get away from David. Alas, as soon as they make it outside the house he teleports to be outside with them when he was just at the front door talking to Devi. He GMs her into talking to no one in order to make sure the good characters don't escape him.
David ditch count: 2
Everyone is upset they did not escape David. Also Marcus is here now too. Madelaine tells them that she intends to die on the island. Amanda tells her not to think like that, Hawley suggests they move to a less open area to look for Dodd. Everyone except David decides they should go to the lighthouse and they leave before David can throw in his two cents.
END OF THREAD THANK GOD
Hawley hears a weird noise. Madelaine goes to check it out and it's some dude singing and chopping a body with an axe.
He comes out all crazy having just killed a kid named Jimmy and Hawley wants to leave. Marcus wants to fight. Hawley thinks that if they fight the axe boy (Blaine) they risk injuring a party member. Madelaine takes out her gun and threatens to shoot Blaine.
They decide to leave and Madelaine apologizes for scaring Blaine. WHY? HE JUST AXED SOMEONE IN THE FACE TO DEATH
Madelaine wrote:
"Who am I to point fingers at now? she thought sullenly. After all...I just pointed a gun at someone, looking at them as though they were a wooden target, unable to feel happiness, fear, anger, or pain."
NO YOU CAN YOU SEE BECAUSE YOU DID NOT MURDER A PERSON. Also foreshadow of her not giving a fuck about people dying later.
Sidenote: I don't like Madelaine's monologue talk. When she's allowed to talk for too long uninterrupted the dialogue doesn't sound like how humans talk. Sounds like dialogue from a not very good anime
Marcus is upset they are letting a murderer just walk away. Fair. Madelaine says that though it's possible he'll go kill someone, she was thinking selfishly about not wanting to risk a fight. Also fair. She says in the moment she pointed the gun at him she didn't think of him as human, but if she did kill anyone she couldn't face her family.
Hawley tells Amanda and Madelaine that his goal is to help the people who prove that they are good to get off the island, which is why he'll stay with them. Nice.
Madelaine says that she doesn't feel comfortable trusting so many people but that it's part of what's helping her get through this. But now she also wants to survive? Before she didn't. I'll say that it's Hawley's influence that's changed her mind.
NEXT THERAD
The gang come up to the clinic which has inside a scared and injured Elise. A scared, unarmed young girl begging for safety? DAVID KILL!
He tells her to come out or he'll open fire. She repeats that her legs are injured, she can't walk. He tells her he doesn't give a shit and she better get her ass out of that room or he'll kill her, broken legs or not.
Dude, come on. I'm ready to downgrade Hawley and Madelaine if they let this slide.
Elise sighs and crawls across the floor to the door to avoid being shot. Well, Madelaine tells him he's being a jerk and also makes a joke about his small dick, so it's not a total loss.Elise has crawled to the door and Madelaine is helping her up and snapping at the others to help too. Elise is like "Hi yeah, someone shot me in the legs. So are you gonna kill me now?" Elise's got jokes too! So Madelaine and Hawley help Elsie.
Meanwhile:
Amanda tells David to be less of a fucking dick, but she says it nice. He says he'll try.
Hawley is doctoring up Elise, Madelaine has gone to search the area and suddenly JACOB, STEVAN AND PERI SHOW UP AND I NO LONGER KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING. I can't tell who is talking to who out of this trio. Oh well.David hears the talking and warns the group.
Amanda: "FUCK! It's Jacob..." she hissed to Madelaine and Hawley.
I know that feel.
Madelaine runs inside while David goes out to fight, the only thing he's really ever wanted to do.
A shoot out happens between David, Stevan, Peri and Jacob. I can't tell what's happening besides a lot of shooting with no one actually getting shot. Also I don't care what happens to any of them.
MADELAINE HAS FOUND A BACK DOOR OUT OF THE HOSPITAL. Let's see if the group can finally escape David. Oh no, Amanda's been hit in the leg which reminds David that Amanda is there. Amanda is like "NO, I'M FINE GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING."
David ditch count: 3
All of them escape, including Marcus who has teleported once again and somehow David even though he was shooting people. Curses.
Now we've made it
I stand before the precipice
No second thoughts, no backward glances
The games we've played till now are at an end
No second thoughts. I've decided.
Past the point of no return. No going back now!
Our passion-play has now, at last, begun
Past all thought of right or wrong!
How long should we two wait before we're one?
When will the blood begin to race?
The sleeping bud burst into blood?
When will the flames, at last, CONSUMEEEEE USSSSS?
THE FINAL TRESHOLD
THE BRIDGE IS CROSSED
ONWARD TO: THOUGH WE MAY NOT SURVIVE IT....
Madelaine is sweating and dying from running full tilt away from the gun battle. She looks back to take stock and see if everyone is with them-
Jacob is now with them in addition to David
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjda8O-lYgE
Madelaine collapses, Hawley collapses next to her and Amanda collapses between them. Aw. Jacob and David seem to be doing peachy and Hawley is upset they are still with them. Jacob is like "I'm good now!" David is like "C'moooooon"
Amanda grabs a gun that Jacob dropped and threatens to kill Jacob since he tried to kill Dodd. Hawley tells David to shut the fuck up.
Mandelaine tells everyone to freeze. She doesn't want them killing, but also tells Jacob to get away from them and if David has a problem he can leave too (they have been trying to escape David for so long).
David ditch count 3
Jacob grabs the gun out of Amanda's hands and sadly asks David if he'll stay with them and David sadly says yes (NOOOOOOOO).
An OOC battle breaks out since Jacob took the gun with Amanda without her permission.
Dodd lets it go and Amanda is distraught that she almost shot someone and cries on Madelaine. Madelaine hugs her as she cries.
OOC Swoosh asks what became of Elise. Makaze says Madelaine was only aiming to get her friends out. Ouch, guess Elise isn't a friend.
The terrorists come on reading erotica! Except then Danya takes over and says they'll be sent to the island.
Our trio is sutibly freaked out except David who says if they can beat the terrorists then they can get them to tell the kids how to take the collars off. Hawley is doubtful the kids can beat military trained combatants.
He instead goes back to helping Amanda. But then Madelaine realizes she's also been shot or at least grazed on the shoulder. It's bleeding quite a bit.
Hawley tells her to stay calm and asks her about her life to distract her while he gets supplies for the wound. She talks about her writing and her favorite noodle dish and how her family was so dependent on her that she has no idea what they'll do without her. He needs her to take off the shirt so he can get to the wound and she does, with both a bit embarrassed but neither remarking on it.
Hawley reveals that he hoped to become a doctor like his parents. The bullet is still in her but he says it's better to leave it be than to try to dig it out unless it really starts to bother her, but that it's not a good option.This is all very nice stuff that lets us know more about each character while building their bond naturally.
DAVID EXPLODES THE COLLAR OF A DEAD PERSON AND ALL HE HAS IS A CUT. Expert opinion on this is some of his fingers should be blown off.
Hawley patches up everyone and Amanda requests some time for girl talk, telling Hawley and David to make conversation in the meantime. This should be good, but I'm also afraid that Amanda and Madelaine will consider Hawley a sacrifice and try to escape David again.
Marcus has finally made it out of wherever he was and collapses. They tell him to go up the road and visit Nurse Hawley, while hoping no one has followed him.
OH BUT SOMEONE HAS.
Amanda talks about how Adam is her true love and she only trusts her emotions with Madelaine. Madelaine can't understand quite since she's never felt romantic about anyone.
FORGET DODD, AMANDA. GET WITH MADELAINE."I've....I've never fallen in love before. I've never even been close to a boy, for that matter. But...I do know what it's like to deeply, truly care about someone. I mean....I care about you, you know"
Oh Madelaine says that their friendship still exists and it's worth holding on to and fighting for even though their chances are slim. Blaine is sneaking up on the girls, but they hear him because he's singing the lyrics to his song post. If only he'd been quiet he could have gotten the drop on them.
He starts talking about how Madelaine pointed a gun at him and didn't wanna be his friend and all his other friends fell asleep (he killed them) so she must die. She counters his axe with the tire iron and tells Amanda to run for Hawley and David. But that injured leg isn't helping and he runs to kill Amanda but THEN ADAM DODD.
He shoots Blaine in his first kill. History in the making. Adam breaks down and it's pretty good. Good job, V1 Dodd.
Madelaine is in a shock state and is only brought back once Dodd starts to weep. She feels bad that Dodd has taken on the burden of killing that she would have had to in order to save Amanda.
Hawley's back from his walk alone. Did he finally manage to shake David? OH NO HE'S EVIL NOW, WHY? : (
Adam is like "Lol, what?" and Hawley is like "Friendship is weakness, I made a mistake, there is no such thing as true friends. I gotta kill you" and Madelaine steps in front of Dodd and is like "What about all the times you helped us? I believe in friendship and you!"
But then a new character joins the scene named Callum! He's looking for his imaginary friend Beth and decides that because she is in trouble, Madelaine is Beth so he'll save her. It looks like Madelaine is winning over Hawley who says he's afraid and doesn't want to die because he trusted the wrong people, but then Callum tackles him.
Madelaine thinks that even though he's behaving irrationally she still trusts him and turns her gun on Callum, saying he was wrong to rush Hawley. Sure, ok, but to an outside observer it did look like he was about to shoot you.
Hawley says that when he heard the gun shots from the Blaine scuffle he assumed someone had killed the girls and felt like it was his fault if anything bad happened because he left clearly injured girls alone. To cope he tried to convince himself they were never his real friends in order to prepare for when Dodd would blame him for their deaths.
Interesting.
Callum talks to a second imaginary friend : I
Hawley begins tending to the arm wound Dodd got in his Blaine fight and thinks about how he ditched David.
David ditch count: 4"There was someone up there with some kind of weapon when David and I got there..." He muttered, blinking as he took note that he had left David back there when he had came back here
Marcus has come back and he's fucked up. Amanda goes to help him while Hawley pumps Dodd full of m o r p h I n e so he can sew his arm up.
David's found them again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtBfGvzzlwM
Madelaine is promoted to nurse as Hawley tells her how to take care of Marcus while he sews up the Doddster. I'm not exactly sure what's happened to Marcus but he's been whipped pretty badly. A nice character moment here from Hawley who inwardly freaks out, not sure if he can tackle such extensive wounds and feeling pressured that at 15 these people are counting on him to save this person.
Well another girl comes upon them wearing the same uniform from Madelaine's old school in Japan. One might assume that they could know each other. David?
David threatens to kill scared unarmed girl count: also 4"Who are you?" David asked the newcomer, walking over to her with his gun raised...
"Why shouldn't I just shoot you now, whoever you are? It would save us a lot of trouble."
At this point I'm surprised David has not threatened me for being a girl with no weapon.
Marcus understands that shooting a crying girl on the floor is bad PR at the very least. Amanda tells him to STOP TRYING TO KILL UNARMED GIRLS LOOKING FOR HELP.
Uh, Nanami calls Madelaine "Shirohara-san" which I think isn't right? I mean, Madelaine says they are childhood friends and even "best friend." Maybe this is intentional to show us that Nanami doesn't really consider them to be that close or Nanami thinks of Madelaine as superior.
I instantly like Nanami. She's not happy to see Madelaine, but she doesn't have the heart to say so. She lies, saying she meant to write her, thinking that lies are just easier sometimes rather than hurting people with the truth.
Uh oh. I think we're reaching a Madelaine turning point.
So up until this point I would say I characterize Madelaine as "okay" learning a bit towards "good." She's not given a ton of introspection and some of her moments come across as sort of Saturday morning cartoon in how much she talks about friendship, but she has a really cute relationship to Hawley which actually challenged her a bit because he has a past that goes against her ideals. She's shown to be pragmatic sometimes too, having to chose to save her immediate friends rather than extend herself by trying to help more people (like leaving Elsie in the dust). Now and then she's got a good character moment.
By modern standards she wouldn't be a revelation, but for V1 she's solid enough. But now we start to see some cracks....
As mentioned in the Toben review of Nanami, Madelaine comforts Nanami and remembers a time that she comforted her in the past, but never actually asked her what was wrong, and then says Nanami gets upset over "petty things." How do you know if you never asked?
Madelaine assures her that all of them will get out and Nanami asks, shocked, if she trusts these strangers. When Madelaine says she trusts them with her life, Nanami rightly points out that David was about to shoot her. Nanami wants to them to leave together but Madelaine tells her she's being silly.
Nanami is aghast that Madelaine would choose these strangers over her best friend, but also thinks that because Madelaine is so self-sacrificing it's good to have her around because she'll protect her at the cost of her own life. Mmmm okay. Nanami and Madelaine are written by the same person so, this looks to be a way to reinforce how kind Madelaine is in a quick way.
Adam Dodd doesn't like the fact that Nanami wants to leave so in his morphine craze he calls Nanami a "whiny bitch" and tells her to "shut the fuck up." Yeah, that's gonna win her over for sure. He also tells her that he killed a man and that Madelaine is for sure not an Asian sex slave.
I'm sure that Dodd meant for Dodd to sound totally crazy here and the opposite of comforting, but it kind of works against Makaze's efforts to paint Nanami as unreasonable for wanting to leave. Dodd essentially says that if she leaves they'll follow.
Nanami stands there horrified and crying, Amanda is horrified and mad, Madelaine is horrified and slaps him one good. Nanami remembers some other times in the past when Madelaine was the best and tells us how Madelaine always stands up for her. Er, okay. Show don't tell ect. She thinks Dodd has seen through her cunning manipulation (I think he's just tripping) and she's resentful that she is dependent on Madelaine which also comes across as showing us how great Madelaine is.
Also as mentioned by Toben, she escalates the situation to physical violence by slapping Dodd when it probably could have been resolved more easily without violence given that he's just kind of rambling while high. Hawley basically says all this, telling Madelaine that he's just drugged up and there's no reason to get violent.
Madelaine doesn't like that everyone told her she needs to cool it and she sulks, rather than reflect. This does call back to her not liking being talked down to since she's used to being the one acting as the parent. It's a bit like when she was resentful of Hawley correctly saying she shouldn't be out in the cold despite her talking down to him earlier.
All this is cool, but Nanami's accounts of Madelaine don't betray any of that, nor is Madelaine self-aware of this problem. Her not being self-aware doesn't bother me, but the narrative nor Nanami, a second party, are either.
AFTER ALL THIS, SHE INTRODUCES NANAMI TO THE GROUP.
Best. Friends.
Random thought: Should Madaline and Nanami be speaking in Japanese? Perhaps not all the time but at the very least when Nanami is trying to convince Madelaine to leave the group within earshot of the group?
Madelaine tells her that they are staying with the group and that Nanami would like them if she opens up. Nanami doesn't like having decisions made for her. This is actually in character though since Madelaine is used to making decisions for people unilaterally. She doesn't consider Nanami's feelings in the decision-making, but I think she always just does what she things is right just using her own perspective.
The thing I don't know is if we're supposed to take Nanami's anecdotes about Madeline being kind and angelic at face value and think "Ok yeah, she's the best" or if those memories are just coated in Nanami's bitterness and her own perception is remembering Madelaine as more angelic than she really is.
I can't..........tell..........
If it is that she has a flaw of being thoughtless because her childhood of having to make the adult decisions for her family have gotten used to her thinking she knows what's best for everyone without truly considering their point of view and Nanami's resentment of that treatment carrying over to her has made her falsely paint a more grand picture of Madelaine.....it might be too subtle? Is that it though?
"But now, all Nanami could think about was how much she resented Shirohara-san at that moment, just because she was right. She was always right."
IS she always right? Or does Nanami just THINK she's always right because she's resentful? She also thinks about how Madelaine is scary but also makes friends with everyone. Laying it on a bit thick.
Did I say thick?
THICC
"And then there was you, Shirohara-san. You were always really cool, even as a grade school student. No one ever saw you crying, and you always looked after everyone else. Even the teachers thought you were special, because you were always good with words, writing, that sort of thing.... Everyone really admired you, you know?"
We're running into issues of author intent here as I try to untangle this because Toben pointed me to a character trivia thread wherein Makaze says:
From the author herself, Nanami is not meant to have depth, but to be a flat villain that will contrast to how great Madelaine is. It's quite possible that she was intended as a way to pump up Madelaine's goodness to the reader and any fault on Madelaine's part is accidental. I don't like that. It seems like cheating and cheap as far as character development.Nanami Nishida is not particularly based on anyone in particular, rather the tendencies that I often notice in people who are unhappy with their lives, and blame the people close to them for their unhappiness.
Well Nanami shoots Madelaine, everyone comes running and Nanami is pretty much in a corner with Madelaine as a hostage. She says that all throughout their friendship she has always resented Madelaine smothering her, pitying her, telling her what to do.
Uh, Madelaine doesn't consider any of this. Man, it is so hard to get her to consider other points of view that are not her, even when it comes to her best friend. She's hurt that the friendship was based on a lie. Ok.
My patience is wearing thin right now at page 10 of 17 of this thread.
Dodd tries to goad Nanami into paying attention to him instead of Madelaine, which is brave and selfless. See, Madelaine? This works.....until David tries to shoot the gun out of Nanami's hand and she gets upset and shoots Madelaine, grazing her cheek.
Mmm I dont know that Nanami will agree that she's a burden and sucks, but apparently Madelaine agrees?"Something goes wrong, and you cry... right? But you had something there for you, you had her." He said, nodding his head lightly toward the fallen form of Madelaine. "Someone there to comfort you and to make the tears go away. You should be happy someone cared about you enough to do such a thing, but you see that as nothing but a burden, and a weakness on your part brought on by her."
Right now, Madelaine hoped more than ever that Nanami would take to heart and understand what Hawley was saying to her, before something horrible happened.
Nanami has taken considerable verbal abuse so she decides she'll prove her strength instead by killing the crowd, taking aim at Amanda. Madelaine shoots her and then screams for help. David kicks a dying girl in the ribs. Stay classy.
Madelaine apologies for never realizing her friend was unhappy and for discouraging for standing up for herself, telling her such behavior was "troublesome." Better late than never. Nanami tries to apologize for the attempted murder, but dies first. Harsh. Silver lining: Dodd heard it and tries to tell the others.
Madelaine goes catatonic due to shooting her friend and Dodd is now the cheerleader of the group, telling them they can make it, they have to keep moving.
Me, me, me. I'm the one you should focus on in this death."Who will I protect now? Who's friend am I now?"
Amanda, Dodd and Hawley awkwardly cough in the distance. As she is basically catatonic we spend a lot of time being locked in her brain. She's not interacting with anyone much, forcing people to cater to her while not giving back anything.
Madelaine can hear Amanda's pleas to snap out of her catatonia, but just isn't talking to her. WHY? Holy shit, this thread is longer than Catcher in the Rye and she's not interacting with anyone so I'm locked in her brain.
Madelaine for the rest of the thread:
If I were Hawley or Dodd I'd throw her over Marcus's shoulder like a sack of potatoes and keep moving.
Amanda has an actually really nice plea to Madelaine about how they could have been friends at home and how she needs her. Madelaine hears it and smiles but STILL DOESN'T RESPOND DEAR JESUS.
Oh no, we've switched to SOTF: Oregon trail as one of our party members has fallen ill.
GuitarJack wrote:
Some head trauma always adds a little sauce to the story. HAWLEY IS THE ONLY DOCTOR HE'S BUSY, HE IS NOT GETTING PAID ENOUGH."ooc(you all have two days to figure out how to help a person with a concussion, or Marcus is going into a coma. Just thought I would spice things up a bit.)"
SPEEDIN' UP THE PACE SO I DON'T DIE HERE
The J-crew show up (Jeremy, Heather, Glenn and Fred) and it's like:
Heather: you shot me and stole my gun. Give it back!
David: you're a player, no.
Heather: I shot a guy who tried to rape me and another crazy dude who wanted to murder me because he said I was a witch
David: bitch I don't care, you can have it back when you take it from my cold dead hands
Heather: ok (fires shots)
David: (fires shots)
Adam: Oh no a player!
Madelaine: I have to protect my friends! (Shoots at Heather)
Dodd gets a pass here but Madelaine was around to see David steal from and assault Heather the first time. Let's check in on how Madelaine is doing.
"The sight of Heather being shot down like that...did not seem to have much of an effect of Madelaine now for some reason.
This puzzled her mildly, and she wondered vaguely what was up with her all of a sudden, why she was not feeling anything. Her confusion increased as she felt herself remaining her calm while David pressed the barrel of his gun against Heather's forehead. Though for some reason...she felt a flicker of enjoyment as the crippled girl had cowered helplessly in front of David. It appalled her...and almost excited her at the same time..."
She's on the straight and narrow.
David takes the opportunity to tell Amanda he loves her while Jeremy and Fred are screaming over a passed out Heather, who they then rush to the hospital. Then Hawley succumbs to his wounds and dies in a touching scene where he says that he's always felt alone and realized too late he had true friends.
UGH NO HE WAS MY FAVORITE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LVxDcOfF5E
Hawley's death snaps Madelaine into talking again and she seems upset but not super upset? Oh and Marcus is dead so we shoot him and leave despite Amanda's protests (though she admits he's a vegetable at this point). Madelaine decides she's going to die in this place, but she will give her all to protect her friends, even if this means killing someone or playing. STRAIGHT AND NARROW.
IT'S OVER AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH-
Ok we go to the warehouse, Jacob locks Amanda, Cody and Madelaine in the warehouse for ????? reasons I guess. Cody decides to mac on Amanda and forcibly kisses her to which Madelaine brains him in the head with a tire iron. They make their escape once Adam, David and friendspry the doors open.....
Last thread. Let's fucking rock
DAVID DITCH COUNT: 5, YOU DID IT GUYS!
Dodd explains the kills to his name to newcomers Jill, Martyn and Chance and Madelaine has this to say
Sounds pretty different from Madelaine "I'll never kill, killing is unforgivable" from the start, and you know what, I like that she has evolved her stance here as she's gotten pushed."The thing is, these kinds of circumstances, they tend to bring out the absolute worst in people. It's not a sin or anything...it's just the instinct to survive, something that can't be helped anymore..."
As she wandered about, she found herself stopping before Nanami's corpse. And to think.....that only moments ago, you were cursing me, saying how much you hated me, and how you were going to kill me. Friendship is a wonderful thing, isn't it?
Madelaine is not in any way a messiah figure of goodness, hope and light, but she is kind of fascinating as someone who kind of took up that mantle in a superficial way to end up at the end like "Fuck hope, fuck this, fuck friendship : ) "
Her complete disillusion in friendship at this point makes it almost worth having sat through all her friendship speeches in the first few threads. I feel like maybe it's not a conscious decision from the writer because a moment later when talking to Chance she says she trusts the group, even though the only members she's been with for a long time are Adam and Amanda (Martyn and Jill have only now joined up).
Well, as you may know by now Cody catches up to them and grabs Madelaine while she's looking at the bodies of her friends (they are back at the river). He chokes her to unconsciousness, binds her hands and tells her if she does not cooperate or if she screams he'll kill her and proceeds to undress her.
This can't be happening.... Good girls don't go through this. Honour students are never raped. What did I do? Did I do something to deserve this...?
I have * thoughts .* Oh boy. Oh jeez. Okay, I do realize that this was 12 years ago and attitudes towards sexual assault have changed quite a bit so part of this is likely a product of it's time but.....jeez. This is obviously a horrible attitude to have towards victims of sexual assault and I guess Madelaine thinks that only girls that "deserve it" get raped. I don't know how this meshes with her personality traits of being nurturing and caring but it doesn't speak well of her.
This is also uhhhh ermmm uhh
She would give anything to trade places with anyone right now...to let someone suffer in her place.
[next post]
After all, may the worst happen...to even the good-hearted.
TLDR: Cody is biting her a lot and head butting her to inflict damage while raping her. The rape is a bit secondary because the violence gets a lot more focus and pretty much doesn't go into the nitty gritty of the sexual act. I get the feeling that we're just meant to watch her suffer as much as possible. Case in point the narrative directly tells you:
"This is something that no one should have to go through."
Uh, thanks? I kind of already thought that.
"Here she was, first being coerced into submission, then finding herself being violated and tortured in just about one of the worse ways imaginable."
don't tell ect.
He rips her throat out with his teeth after climax and she starts to die of blood loss.
Holy jesus, I can't believe the river thread is longer than Lord of the Flies (Not an exaggeration, we word counted it and it's almost a full third longer than Lord of the Flies). Oh, Madelaine. I said it already but I guess I can see how at the time of V1, since she's written competently and with some style and approaches some nice bonds she would be a big deal. For the time, she's pretty impressive and if you took her story from before "Though We May Not Survive It" in isolation I'd say she's decent. Perhaps nothing special, but nothing particularly offensive and someone who could be dropped into any version.
However....
"Though We May Not Survive It" does happen and her meeting with Nanami is what starts her long slide downward. Readers don't like being told how much you should love a character or how great they are and that's all Nanami is. Following this kill Madelaine sucks all action towards her and her motivations and views become wobbly and change frequently. There's a bit of a fascinating switch where Madelaine becomes very cruel and dismissive, but the narrative wants to have its cake and eat it too, telling us that she's still the hope and light. I feel like Makaze wanted to experiment with the effects of trauma, but also didn't want anyone to think Madelaine was anything but the best, most good hearted character around. A bit Mary Sue-ish following the introduction of Nanami. By the time she's dead Dodd laments her death, saying she was the hope and the kindness and heart of their group but in the same thread she says she'll kill or play to save the people she likes. I don't know how to reconcile those two different versions of Madelaine that Madelaine tries to sell us.
Recommend? Uhhhhhhh, mmmmm no. I would instead recommend Hawley who may be the best V1 character I've read so far. All the best Madelaine moments come from Hawley so that will showcase the best of her, and you don't have to read an empty rape scene that contributes nothing to the character's story.
(Originally posted by CPB)
Redemption.
I'd like another, if there are any left.
Redemption.
Spoiler!
This kid has one thread, but we don't discriminate based on length here at the CharacterBylineProcessing plant. No siree, we are equal and fair and everything that is good. If I'm a little incoherent during this one it's because my brain is fried due to three straight days of working on an essay that I had a week to do but in all honesty even that isn't an excuse because I really only worked on it today—even CBP is full of Clumsy, Blatant Plotholes.
Cleo is of particular interest to me because of her status as a witch. One of my V7 children, Violet Schmidt, is also a practitioner of the Occult, and I myself have many experiences with the esoteric mystery traditions in my personal life. When I see that a character is listed in their profile as having turned to "black magic," I panic a little. In today's magical culture, many people practice the Left Hand Path and manage to lead virtuous lives; just by manipulating reality to get their way every now and then. The old white vs. black magic divide is a little out of date, and belongs in the 1000's. It's a lot more nuanced than that in reality, and I think we would benefit just as well from occult literacy as we do from religious literacy.
Given that background, it should be no surprise that I find this portrayal of Wicca somewhat...fallacious? It reads a bit more like the rites of a cult than the rites of a good, honest, benevolent coven. I don't know why the children would be involved in rituals that much, but maybe that's just my own lack of knowledge, I don't know, it's not like my mother was a wiccan for a while or anything (because my mother was a wiccan for a while or something). Her tantrums get her parents effectively exiled from the coven, she gets a psychiatrist, she hates the psychiatrist, she bewitches someone else, blah blah blah blak look.
Look.
Right here, into my eyes.
Do you see my eyes?
Can you see deep into my eyes?
What color are they?
What color are your eyes?
Can you tell what these eyes have seen?
I can tell what your eyes have seen.
Are your eyes as fierce as Cleo's?
No.
That's not why I'm doing this.
I want to see into your soul.
That's right. I want to see into every little crevice in there.
Every wrinkle, every vein.
Every coil, every twist.
Every pulse.
Every iteration.
Every reincarnation.
Do you want to know what I see in there?
Because that is what my purpose is.
To show not just you what I can see in your soul,
but to show everybody what I can see in your soul.
And what I can see in your soul?
It doesn't weigh very heavily, with God.
God.
That's right.
The big man.
He's looking down, right now.
He's shaking his head.
But that ain't God, no. That ain't even a capital-G God. That's little-g god.
The Demiurge.
I can see in your heart its influence. It's madness. It's discord.
But you can take it away if you know what it is.
What is it?
Heh.
Haha.
It's Cleo.
Cleo Barton.
Cleo Barton is the Demiurge.
Capricious.
Avaricious.
Delicious Evil.
Why don't we take a look at what weapon Cleo Barton was dealt?
Oh?
A gun?
Not just any gun, but an H&K USP 9MM Pistol. A very clean, very nice looking pistol. How does it fire? I don't know. But what's important is that Cleo Barton got it. Keep that in mind. Picture the gun in your mind. Picture it so well,
so fiercely,
that I can see it in your eyes.
It should look a little like this.
Now, what would you expect that Cleo Barton does with this gun? Does she get a kill? Does she?
Does she?
No.
She takes pills.
She snaps a cat's legs.
She sits, and waits, and then,
she is killed.
Disemboweled.
With a flick of the sword, and then her gun is relinquished.
Her existence is solely so that she can sow some chaos, and then leave, but her influence is felt for years.
Thirteen years, to be exact.
Until today.
Until Cleo Barston is named as the Demiurge, right here,
right now.
How am I able to do this?
How can I peer so deeply into someone else's soul, and see the face of the truest evil that there is?
I'm about to reveal a secret to you, dear reader.
Are you ready?
[-] spoiler
[-] spoiler
[-] spoiler
[-] spoiler
[-] spoiler
it is still April Fools day. Don't waste your time with Cleo Barston. She has a single post. Really? A SINGLE post!! Wow! ughrgh.
Cleo is of particular interest to me because of her status as a witch. One of my V7 children, Violet Schmidt, is also a practitioner of the Occult, and I myself have many experiences with the esoteric mystery traditions in my personal life. When I see that a character is listed in their profile as having turned to "black magic," I panic a little. In today's magical culture, many people practice the Left Hand Path and manage to lead virtuous lives; just by manipulating reality to get their way every now and then. The old white vs. black magic divide is a little out of date, and belongs in the 1000's. It's a lot more nuanced than that in reality, and I think we would benefit just as well from occult literacy as we do from religious literacy.
Given that background, it should be no surprise that I find this portrayal of Wicca somewhat...fallacious? It reads a bit more like the rites of a cult than the rites of a good, honest, benevolent coven. I don't know why the children would be involved in rituals that much, but maybe that's just my own lack of knowledge, I don't know, it's not like my mother was a wiccan for a while or anything (because my mother was a wiccan for a while or something). Her tantrums get her parents effectively exiled from the coven, she gets a psychiatrist, she hates the psychiatrist, she bewitches someone else, blah blah blah blak look.
Look.
Right here, into my eyes.
Do you see my eyes?
Can you see deep into my eyes?
What color are they?
What color are your eyes?
Can you tell what these eyes have seen?
I can tell what your eyes have seen.
Are your eyes as fierce as Cleo's?
No.
That's not why I'm doing this.
I want to see into your soul.
That's right. I want to see into every little crevice in there.
Every wrinkle, every vein.
Every coil, every twist.
Every pulse.
Every iteration.
Every reincarnation.
Do you want to know what I see in there?
Because that is what my purpose is.
To show not just you what I can see in your soul,
but to show everybody what I can see in your soul.
And what I can see in your soul?
It doesn't weigh very heavily, with God.
God.
That's right.
The big man.
He's looking down, right now.
He's shaking his head.
But that ain't God, no. That ain't even a capital-G God. That's little-g god.
The Demiurge.
I can see in your heart its influence. It's madness. It's discord.
But you can take it away if you know what it is.
What is it?
Heh.
Haha.
It's Cleo.
Cleo Barton.
Cleo Barton is the Demiurge.
Capricious.
Avaricious.
Delicious Evil.
Why don't we take a look at what weapon Cleo Barton was dealt?
Oh?
A gun?
Not just any gun, but an H&K USP 9MM Pistol. A very clean, very nice looking pistol. How does it fire? I don't know. But what's important is that Cleo Barton got it. Keep that in mind. Picture the gun in your mind. Picture it so well,
so fiercely,
that I can see it in your eyes.
It should look a little like this.
Now, what would you expect that Cleo Barton does with this gun? Does she get a kill? Does she?
Does she?
No.
She takes pills.
She snaps a cat's legs.
She sits, and waits, and then,
she is killed.
Disemboweled.
With a flick of the sword, and then her gun is relinquished.
Her existence is solely so that she can sow some chaos, and then leave, but her influence is felt for years.
Thirteen years, to be exact.
Until today.
Until Cleo Barston is named as the Demiurge, right here,
right now.
How am I able to do this?
How can I peer so deeply into someone else's soul, and see the face of the truest evil that there is?
I'm about to reveal a secret to you, dear reader.
Are you ready?
[-] spoiler
[-] spoiler
[-] spoiler
[-] spoiler
[-] spoiler
it is still April Fools day. Don't waste your time with Cleo Barston. She has a single post. Really? A SINGLE post!! Wow! ughrgh.
(Originally posted by Iceblock)
Finished Peri Barclay.
Finished Peri Barclay.
Spoiler!
Well... Peri has a traumatic backstory, but I suppose that's par for the course. His family got on the wrong side of gangsters, so stuff happens and the gangsters do bad things to his parents and shoot his best friend because they think they're shooting Peri (who was the one to push his best friend into view). He also did some violence upon some people bullying him. There's other stuff too but it's just to show that he's dark and disturbed.
In game, Peri has a lot of standoffs and a few gunfights. His early game stuff is probably the strongest part of his story.
He intimidates and robs people, then teams up with them or otherwise helps them. He does this with someone named Elise, whose death (by his on-and-off again friend and ally Stevan Hyde) is sort of a high point in his story because it actually sort of affects him to act like a good guy for a while, not that he treated her well when they were allies. To be more clear about that, he robs her, gives her stuff back, gets abandoned by her, chases her, shoots her, robs her again, saves her from Stevan, then just drops her to get killed by Stevan, then chases Stevan away and gives her corpse one of his cigarettes. Anyway her death causes him to join an escape group for a while, where he chills, eats candy, and then kills his first person, the group leader, in self-defense. Peri also tends to lie through his teeth, so much so that his narration doesn't ever tell anyone when he's lying.
During this time he says some funny stuff and is occasionally thoughtful about the little details, like noting that his long hair could get in his eyes and cause problems for him during a fight. He even thinks about past students that he encountered (Elise, Jacob Starr) and lets that vaguely influence his arc, which is actually really nice.
He consistently teams up with Stevan Hyde, who is linked with him in backstory, but IMO there's not too much there. They never really discuss how they know each other, there's no bonding time, there's just some implicit trust and they shoot at the same targets when they team up.
The writing quality also improves throughout. Tenses become more consistent, grammar and punctuation markedly improve, and the narrator stops asking rhetorical questions about Peri's intentions to make him seem mysterious.
Sadly, it's around the middle of his story that he just starts shooting people without any real cause, and seemingly stops thinking about it at all.
Then Peri was adopted.
It's all downhill from there. Peri's given an internal monologue, which would be nice, but it just doesn't seem to fit. He starts having song lyrics embedded in his posts. He suddenly abandons Stevan and everyone else, only interacts with one other character named Dorian, and gets railroaded hard into some sort of romantic relationship with him, culminating in a content warning thread.
Then he runs off, attacks Adam Dodd, trips on a rock, and dies.
Sorry. I don't like him post-adoption. The internal monologue was interesting at first but then stopped feeling like the same character as previously.
To sum up pre-adoption again, he's not terrible. He's okay. Says some funny stuff. Acts way too cool. Kept robbing/teaming up with/playing mind games with/suddenly but inevitably betraying female students RPed by a particular other handler. I don't know what that was about.
My favorite part of his story was when he gets shot at when trying to get candy out of a candy machine and he gets really pissed about it. It's the part where he felt most human to me.
In game, Peri has a lot of standoffs and a few gunfights. His early game stuff is probably the strongest part of his story.
He intimidates and robs people, then teams up with them or otherwise helps them. He does this with someone named Elise, whose death (by his on-and-off again friend and ally Stevan Hyde) is sort of a high point in his story because it actually sort of affects him to act like a good guy for a while, not that he treated her well when they were allies. To be more clear about that, he robs her, gives her stuff back, gets abandoned by her, chases her, shoots her, robs her again, saves her from Stevan, then just drops her to get killed by Stevan, then chases Stevan away and gives her corpse one of his cigarettes. Anyway her death causes him to join an escape group for a while, where he chills, eats candy, and then kills his first person, the group leader, in self-defense. Peri also tends to lie through his teeth, so much so that his narration doesn't ever tell anyone when he's lying.
During this time he says some funny stuff and is occasionally thoughtful about the little details, like noting that his long hair could get in his eyes and cause problems for him during a fight. He even thinks about past students that he encountered (Elise, Jacob Starr) and lets that vaguely influence his arc, which is actually really nice.
He consistently teams up with Stevan Hyde, who is linked with him in backstory, but IMO there's not too much there. They never really discuss how they know each other, there's no bonding time, there's just some implicit trust and they shoot at the same targets when they team up.
The writing quality also improves throughout. Tenses become more consistent, grammar and punctuation markedly improve, and the narrator stops asking rhetorical questions about Peri's intentions to make him seem mysterious.
Sadly, it's around the middle of his story that he just starts shooting people without any real cause, and seemingly stops thinking about it at all.
Then Peri was adopted.
It's all downhill from there. Peri's given an internal monologue, which would be nice, but it just doesn't seem to fit. He starts having song lyrics embedded in his posts. He suddenly abandons Stevan and everyone else, only interacts with one other character named Dorian, and gets railroaded hard into some sort of romantic relationship with him, culminating in a content warning thread.
Then he runs off, attacks Adam Dodd, trips on a rock, and dies.
Sorry. I don't like him post-adoption. The internal monologue was interesting at first but then stopped feeling like the same character as previously.
To sum up pre-adoption again, he's not terrible. He's okay. Says some funny stuff. Acts way too cool. Kept robbing/teaming up with/playing mind games with/suddenly but inevitably betraying female students RPed by a particular other handler. I don't know what that was about.
My favorite part of his story was when he gets shot at when trying to get candy out of a candy machine and he gets really pissed about it. It's the part where he felt most human to me.
(Originally posted by Jilly)
So let's talk about Clare Shephard.
Overall, would I recommend a look at Clare? Yes and no. I say "yes" because Clare has good writing and Toukan really does try their best to contribute and play fair with the more actiony scenes that Clare gets involved in, specifically Neville's death scene and her share of the Vince fight thread are good reads. I say "no" because I am legitimately mad at the fact that Clare's group was railroaded by people who felt they had to completely dominate scenes for no reason at all, or their sole reason was to try and get as high of a kill count as possible.
Ugh. Clare didn't deserve this fate even considering the nip slip. I don't think I'll take another kid, for now.
So let's talk about Clare Shephard.
Spoiler!
I think I've been a little hard on these early-era SOTF profiles in that I'm looking at them through the scope of how profiles are now compared to how they were back then. For the rest of these RATs I'm gonna try and use that lens when reading profiles, viewing them as a product of their time instead of unfairly comparing them to how profiles have transformed over the 13 year period since V1 began.
Clare's fairly par for the course when it comes to her profile. V1 has a couple of batshit insane backstories but Clare's only thing I'm kinda ":/" at is the fact that she bit a girl in self defense and got sent to alternative school as the first course of action. But she did break the skin and leave a scar on the other girl's arm, so idk maybe the school district administrators were in the right on that call.
Otherwise she enjoys reading, listening to music, and her only considerable advantage is that she has experience with guns because of her father. She seems pretty all right.
I'm honestly surprised by Clare in a good way, and it's a shame that she's the only character contribution Toukan has made to SOTF history. She wakes up in the woods, and the first thing she does is scrambles up a tree before meeting Ryan Torres and Neville Eden and establishing a 3-person alliance. She isn't trying to be the queen of comedy or a scene stealer, but she does come across as the most psychologically stable kid in her new group to me, which is great.
Starting Place For Girl No. 38 wrote:
Buckshot! Booyah!
Okay, maybe not. But what I do like about Clare is that her posts in general flow very well and are easy to follow along, both logic and prose-wise. ngl I'm a stupid person who usually has to reread stuff three times and I still miss things, but something about how Toukan writes is very pleasing and straightforward which I do appreciate.
Clare's group moves over to the well in search of cover and have a philosophical talk about choosing to live or die when Dorian Greywood runs into the scene. Vince Samsa shows up out of nowhere and disrupts the scene throwing a smoke grenade and shooting and goes on and on talking like an anime villain. Clare kind of falls into the background during all of this "banter", but she gets hit by one of the stray bullets and ends up charging into the smoke cloud with her shotgun and a wardrobe malfunction in an effort to save Ryan from being monologued at. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to see every other character but Dorian yell at Clare to shoot him already.
She does kinda, moreso shooting at the ground to catch Vince off guard who falls onto one of the notorious killer rocks and shoots himself in the head, taking himself out. I do not care for Vince.
Jason Andrews teleports in and starts unloading his Uzi on the group of 4 because no one can catch a damn break in SOTF V1. Peri Barclay and his gang show up too, so Clare and her friends sans Dorian get the fuck out of there before more murder attempts happen, although they're all beat up pretty bad so it's nice they're trying to roll with the borderline godmodding that keeps happening to them.
And, of course, it figures that the next thread they go in is with more murderbot hijinks. At least in this one Neville and Clare have a really good scene after both being shot by and killing Antonio Franchini. Neville dies curled up next to Clare who is on the brink of death before Ryan shows back up, and even though she's barely hanging in there she decides to still fight for the sake of Ryan and herself until her last breath. Afterwards Jeremy Torres and Heather Pendergast show up, Heather dies, and the remaining group of 3 head for the warehouse.
Sadly in Clare's final thread she gets left behind in the plot, both from the chaos going on and what I assume was an inactive death. Ryan and Jeremy try to get access into the warehouse but Jill Gatling and her group refuse them. Moments later Angelina Kaige, one of the terrorists, shows up and eliminates a majority of the warehouse group with grenades. Deciding it would be fun to stir shit up while she's at it, she snipes Clare. And that's about it, unfortunately.
Clare's fairly par for the course when it comes to her profile. V1 has a couple of batshit insane backstories but Clare's only thing I'm kinda ":/" at is the fact that she bit a girl in self defense and got sent to alternative school as the first course of action. But she did break the skin and leave a scar on the other girl's arm, so idk maybe the school district administrators were in the right on that call.
Otherwise she enjoys reading, listening to music, and her only considerable advantage is that she has experience with guns because of her father. She seems pretty all right.
I'm honestly surprised by Clare in a good way, and it's a shame that she's the only character contribution Toukan has made to SOTF history. She wakes up in the woods, and the first thing she does is scrambles up a tree before meeting Ryan Torres and Neville Eden and establishing a 3-person alliance. She isn't trying to be the queen of comedy or a scene stealer, but she does come across as the most psychologically stable kid in her new group to me, which is great.
Starting Place For Girl No. 38 wrote:
Buckshot! Booyah!
Okay, maybe not. But what I do like about Clare is that her posts in general flow very well and are easy to follow along, both logic and prose-wise. ngl I'm a stupid person who usually has to reread stuff three times and I still miss things, but something about how Toukan writes is very pleasing and straightforward which I do appreciate.
Clare's group moves over to the well in search of cover and have a philosophical talk about choosing to live or die when Dorian Greywood runs into the scene. Vince Samsa shows up out of nowhere and disrupts the scene throwing a smoke grenade and shooting and goes on and on talking like an anime villain. Clare kind of falls into the background during all of this "banter", but she gets hit by one of the stray bullets and ends up charging into the smoke cloud with her shotgun and a wardrobe malfunction in an effort to save Ryan from being monologued at. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to see every other character but Dorian yell at Clare to shoot him already.
She does kinda, moreso shooting at the ground to catch Vince off guard who falls onto one of the notorious killer rocks and shoots himself in the head, taking himself out. I do not care for Vince.
Jason Andrews teleports in and starts unloading his Uzi on the group of 4 because no one can catch a damn break in SOTF V1. Peri Barclay and his gang show up too, so Clare and her friends sans Dorian get the fuck out of there before more murder attempts happen, although they're all beat up pretty bad so it's nice they're trying to roll with the borderline godmodding that keeps happening to them.
And, of course, it figures that the next thread they go in is with more murderbot hijinks. At least in this one Neville and Clare have a really good scene after both being shot by and killing Antonio Franchini. Neville dies curled up next to Clare who is on the brink of death before Ryan shows back up, and even though she's barely hanging in there she decides to still fight for the sake of Ryan and herself until her last breath. Afterwards Jeremy Torres and Heather Pendergast show up, Heather dies, and the remaining group of 3 head for the warehouse.
Sadly in Clare's final thread she gets left behind in the plot, both from the chaos going on and what I assume was an inactive death. Ryan and Jeremy try to get access into the warehouse but Jill Gatling and her group refuse them. Moments later Angelina Kaige, one of the terrorists, shows up and eliminates a majority of the warehouse group with grenades. Deciding it would be fun to stir shit up while she's at it, she snipes Clare. And that's about it, unfortunately.
"Well, aren't you witty." Clare grinned. Her dazed and slightly crazed smile had reached her eyes as she pointed her shotgun towards Vince in the dissipating smoke. "I think it's high time you take your leave."
She was no longer thinking, only acting. Each act only with the motivation of self preservation. Everyone is greedy, right? Pretty much everyone wants to live, so no one could really blame her, right? Right?
The only words dancing through her head were those trying to clear her conscience, cleanse her of the guilt and fear brought on by the game and her own actions.
Was I really that wrong?
Opening child proof caps is a task on the best of days, needless to say this isn't the best day. Clare struggled to remove the lid, she even resorted to gnawing on it to see if she could pry up the edges with her teeth. At least she didn't end up dropping the bottle in the middle of her efforts.
Overall, would I recommend a look at Clare? Yes and no. I say "yes" because Clare has good writing and Toukan really does try their best to contribute and play fair with the more actiony scenes that Clare gets involved in, specifically Neville's death scene and her share of the Vince fight thread are good reads. I say "no" because I am legitimately mad at the fact that Clare's group was railroaded by people who felt they had to completely dominate scenes for no reason at all, or their sole reason was to try and get as high of a kill count as possible.
Ugh. Clare didn't deserve this fate even considering the nip slip. I don't think I'll take another kid, for now.
(Originally posted by CPB)
Lyndi Thibodeaux:
Now THIS is a character that exists!
Overall I think Lyndi is recommendable, but with the caveat that she drops off towards the end of her run. However, the good parts of Lyndi are sane and coherent, a shining beacon of comprehensibility in a world of Shinyas and Codys. She actually develops as a character a decent amount, and her reason-you-suck speech to Vince is a good moment, even if it is, ultimately, for nothing.
Another one, please. Let's get this ball rolling just a liiiiiiiitle faster.
Also I want Hawley rngesus plz
Lyndi Thibodeaux:
Now THIS is a character that exists!
Spoiler!
The first thing I'm struck by in this profile is how actually well put together it looks compared to a lot of other V1 profiles I've seen. It's a really dumb quirk of mine, but I really appreciate nicely formed paragraphs that look a good length, as well as the general "shape" of a given post. While brief, the shape of Lyndi's profile is fairly well rounded, with appearance getting a good deal of the profile's bulk but not too much. Tonally, there's some oddness with the usage of "i.e." and putting words in quotes in the Other section and elsewhere but those are minor blemishes on an otherwise nice looking profile.
I swear I know someone who looks like Lyndi in real life. Does every high school have a Lyndi? I appreciate how the appearance section manages to convey how she looks in a way that brings up her efforts to look pretty rather than in a way that fawns over the results of what her efforts actually are. A few things here could probably be moved into the Biography section for consistency but that's a minor wrinkle considering that people were just getting this shit figured out and there isn't much that they could really do.
Speaking of the biography, there are two words that come to mind reading it, and those are "tonally" and "stilted," in the same sentence, right next to each other, preceded by the phrase "Lyndi Thibodeaux's biography section is." I can see this as the setup to a ghost story told in a dark room with a flashlight illuminating the face of storyteller as he puts on his best Twilight Zone voice and fails to impress everyone. It's a bit too subjective and conversationally for me, and, unlike the appearance section, spends too much time extolling Lyndi's virtues. The Other section goes into the casual godmodding pile, the way I'm reading it. At best, it's giving other Barry Coleson High kids a possible hook for how they might choose to interact with Lyndi, but that's kind of dubious to assume as far as intent goes.
She's not very original, either. I can basically sum her up in a sentence: She's a popular girl who moved from California, is nice to folks, does cheerleading, has a protective big brother, not too smart, lives in the present. That's not necessarily a bad thing—in fact, going into her story, it seems like one of her strengths. Her relative normalcy helps her stand out among the hordes of Battle Royale expys and Arkham Asylum escapees. Anyways, she gets assigned a Jump Rope and thrown on the island.
She awakens by the Gazebo in the grass, right next to a corpse. It's strange that whoever killed this Dahlia Riviera girl didn't think to kill the girl sleeping nearby too, but I don't really know anything about Riviera so I can't make any sort of commentary here without looking like some kind of fool. Which I already probably do, but, whatever. Lyndi cries and curses Danya, joining the many hundreds of voices doing the same thing using suspiciously similar wording at some point or another across all of spacetime, and then her thread doesn't get any replies within a week so she decides that the best thing to do is pick up and move on, just like Dahlia's murderer.
The next thread takes place on the dirt path leading away from the Gazebo into the rest of the island. Lyndi reminisces on her past, and these memory fragments give us a reason to root for her that her profile doesn't really sell well just by personifying her in a more In Character way. She's been shaking up by the sight of a corpse, and now she's taking steps to get away from it. In a way, the move to Hellmurder Island from New York is the second great big move in her life, and juxtaposing her memory of the discovery of her move to New York and the time she landed a stunt wrong is a great way to suggest this. The difference now is that Lyndi has the opportunity to take matters into her own hands and move back home, if they're even thinking about her back home, something she can't even say for certain.
An opportunity to get the requisite kill presents itself in the form of a winded Callum Hadley, looking for a girl named Beth. We have no idea what school Callum is from (because Westlands sounds like the hip trendy shoe store front to a drug operation but not the name of a school), but the answer to the enigma is definitely not Barry Colson High, because Lyndi has to introduce herself to him all the same. Callum asks for Beth's whereabouts, and Lyndi is unable to respond affirmatively before asking if he's playing the game.
Fredrik Hughes comes onto the scene clutching at his wounds and hoping he won't run into anyone, right before he runs into two choice individuals. Also, Shinya Motomura descends onto the scene, looking for some new loot pickups. Lyndi sees the injured boy and goes over to help, dragging Callum along. Can't he catch a break, first? Jeez, meet one nice guy and suddenly the entire island is your friend, huh, Lyndi? She doesn't even see Shinya approach; Callum has to warn her about that. Shinya tells them not to force him to shoot, which is like, is he mugging them? Is this a hold up? The announcement plays. Hughes recalls Lyndi's face and warns her to get the hell out of dodge while Callum manages to stare Shinya down without a real good weapon of his own. This time, the questions
THE RIDER
CODY
ZOOMS
ONTO THE SCENE
fires his gun all bang bang pew pew straight in their direction AS A WARNING SHOT because fuck if he kills someone that'll still warn them to get out of the way of his sick ass motorcycle and his sick ass scarf and okay I've seen some kinda ridiculous shit on this site but this is a little over the top for my tastes. This is, obviously, going to bite Shinya in the ass, as denoted both out of character
The new arrival from earlier makes her presence known now. Her name is Elsie Darroch, she's one of Lyndi's friends, and she may or may not be pregnant. That last part is decently important, I think. Call it a hunch. Unsure. Elsie calls out for Lyndi, who beckons her over to maybe help Fred not die. Callum makes himself useful and suggests sensibly that they move somewhere else. The read I get on Lyndi's personality is that, in groups, she tries too hard to play the diplomat and winds up forgetting important things like safety at the expense of trying to help people in the here and the now. Fred suggests the lighthouse, and they all take him up on it. Her motley crew assembled, Lyndi feels a lot more optimistic about things as they make the arduous trek to the lighthouse.
Did I say arduous? I mean they make it there without any major hiccups. The opposite of that other word I used. Sorry, my bad.
Well, there is one wrinkle. Namely, that the lighthouse is infested with a lot of corpses. A lot of corpses, there are. Lyndi retells the story of how she woke up and found the other body to Fred, all the while asking that they go somewhere else. I like how they mention the stench of the corpses as well as their sight, attacking multiple senses at once. Callum sees the corpses, then hears a scream, and is called elsewhere to find his girl Beth. It's alright, though, because we have Elsie plus baby to keep Lyndi company. Callum goes off and dies somewhere else offscreen in a future happening adjacent to the present. Lyndi goes off and wretches somewhere else, because of the corpses.
I appreciate that she recognizes her need to decompress, but it's probably not good to seperate from the group. They should probably just go inside before some other weirdo shows up and wrecks everything oh look here he is already showing up uninvited.
VAVOOOM
CODY
is back but not on the bike this time. He has a weapon, and he comes out of nowhere like an axe murderer. Dude went from Kamen Rider to Jason in record time. Vince sides with the group and decides that they might as well GTFO, as long as they take him along for the ride, and Cody gets close enough to swing. His target? Vince, to finish what he started earlier, and Fred, because he's a guy. He wants to keep the girls for himself. Especially Lyndi. Vince shoots Cody in the side while Fred urges the girls to get inside the lighthouse and hide among the corpses even if he doesn't SAY that last bit. Elsie and Lyndi, and also Vince, dazed a little, make it inside and lock the lighthouse door.
All that Lyndi and Elsie and also Vince can do is wait and listen as Cody and Fred duke it out in the yard. Vince tells the two about the motorbike, and also asks for a kiss, because we were on a roll here with the not-an-action-hero-person train and he just had to go and turn it over like that.
Lyndi, admirably, flips the fuck out on him and tears him to shreds.
Cody shoots her in the leg. He drags her off with him, back to his motorbike, and takes her away. Away from Elsie, from Vince, from the body of Fred, and from the lighthouse. They drive off into the woods.
vroom.
He finds a few people, gets off the bike, drags Lyndi over to a tree and leaves her there, and then engages in a gunfight. For now, Lyndi can't do anything except try to distract Cody and cower in fear of getting shot. I don't exactly appreciate how she's been punished for making a stand as a character, but the tragedy of the situation is played on decently well by how one specific character in the fight, Ryan Ashmore, regards the oddity of the pairing. Ryan was Lyndi's tutor, in a past life, and he has the context to know that Cody and Lyndi don't make sense together. Ryan makes his way over and sneaks past Cody to get to Lyndi in hopes of rescuing her.
Unfortunately, they run right into a literal trap. Like, one for animals. Cody bikes over, but kind of gets lost? And Ryan suddenly turns a little crazy.
Like, coo-coo crazy, and this is where things begin to fall apart even worse.
There wasn't really any indication, from my perspective, for Ryan to start acting this way. The whole "I'm killing you to save you" thing doesn't really hold any water, and given that he had been shown in a positive light before, it's a little hard to see coming from him. All it really was, OOC, was an effort to revive a dying thread. To spice things up. It's really just kill-feeding, though. Because, in case you didn't know what happened, Lyndi kills Ryan in self-defense. Comes out of nowhere, really. Then, she runs back to the lighthouse. Limp is a more appropriate term. It's not the best scene. It's not even an okay scene. It's better than the rapey shit with Cody, though.
Elsie is gone. Only corpses remain. She songpost monologues and improves her resolve, and moves on. It's kinda disappointing, but it's development, I guess? Megami says on the wiki page that "hurr durr Lyndi must suffer from a personality disorder!" but she's been decently consistent as far as thought process goes thus far so I don't see where that's coming from. The chief complaint I have going into her last couple of threads is that it's kind of boring, and by kind of I mean very.
She makes her way to the schoolhouse, loots a corpse, falls asleep, and runs back into Elsie through a closed door. Not wanting to take any chances, she doesn't let her in just yet.
This is character development, in a sense. She's been bruised and abused, battered but not broken, and is now way, way more wary of others than she was when she ran into Fred and Callum and Elsie and Vince and Ryan and yes even Shinya and Cody too. She's learned, even if it took her a while to do so. Predictably, an enemy lies in wait, wracked with some level of distress, hearing the reunion. His name is Michael Suarez, and I will tell you right now that he is a Bad Man, who will probably do Bad Things, even though I haven't read that yet.
Elsie hears Michael and starts flipping out, so Lyndi pulls her inside and learns that she's pregnant, which, understandable, just makes her stress even worse. Michael makes a big show of being likeable and "hey look I won't kill you" but gets ignored, for the time being, until Elsie notices and flips out. Looking to quiet her down, Lyndi decides to go out and lead him away from Elsie. In one final act of selflessness, she decides to prioritize the life of her best friend and her unborn baby over her own. Michael follows for a time, and then goes back to the school building anyways. I'm told that things don't end well for Elsie, but, sorry, we're not here for Juno today.
She runs to the cliff and finds a dead terrorist.
I don't know the whole terrorists-on-the-island subplot, or how that goes. All I know is that it sounds like a really bad idea, in retrospect.
Tired and exhausted from the run, Lyndi sits down to nurse her bum leg. How has she been running on this thing? That just seems more than a little implausible. I'm not a sticker for realism, but this seems like something that probably wasn't considered all too intelligently, but, hey, V1, am I right?
Hidden in the bushes, Angelina Kaige, one of the other terrorists, approaches. She sees Lyndi, and thinks her an easy kill. Already wounded, with her guard down.
She would be right.
A few bullets, and Lyndi is down. A dropkick, and she is dead.
Was it worth it?
...
The read, I mean. Not, y'know, dying.
Well, the answer to that, dear reader, is outsiiiiiiiide the spoiler box!
I swear I know someone who looks like Lyndi in real life. Does every high school have a Lyndi? I appreciate how the appearance section manages to convey how she looks in a way that brings up her efforts to look pretty rather than in a way that fawns over the results of what her efforts actually are. A few things here could probably be moved into the Biography section for consistency but that's a minor wrinkle considering that people were just getting this shit figured out and there isn't much that they could really do.
Speaking of the biography, there are two words that come to mind reading it, and those are "tonally" and "stilted," in the same sentence, right next to each other, preceded by the phrase "Lyndi Thibodeaux's biography section is." I can see this as the setup to a ghost story told in a dark room with a flashlight illuminating the face of storyteller as he puts on his best Twilight Zone voice and fails to impress everyone. It's a bit too subjective and conversationally for me, and, unlike the appearance section, spends too much time extolling Lyndi's virtues. The Other section goes into the casual godmodding pile, the way I'm reading it. At best, it's giving other Barry Coleson High kids a possible hook for how they might choose to interact with Lyndi, but that's kind of dubious to assume as far as intent goes.
She's not very original, either. I can basically sum her up in a sentence: She's a popular girl who moved from California, is nice to folks, does cheerleading, has a protective big brother, not too smart, lives in the present. That's not necessarily a bad thing—in fact, going into her story, it seems like one of her strengths. Her relative normalcy helps her stand out among the hordes of Battle Royale expys and Arkham Asylum escapees. Anyways, she gets assigned a Jump Rope and thrown on the island.
She awakens by the Gazebo in the grass, right next to a corpse. It's strange that whoever killed this Dahlia Riviera girl didn't think to kill the girl sleeping nearby too, but I don't really know anything about Riviera so I can't make any sort of commentary here without looking like some kind of fool. Which I already probably do, but, whatever. Lyndi cries and curses Danya, joining the many hundreds of voices doing the same thing using suspiciously similar wording at some point or another across all of spacetime, and then her thread doesn't get any replies within a week so she decides that the best thing to do is pick up and move on, just like Dahlia's murderer.
The next thread takes place on the dirt path leading away from the Gazebo into the rest of the island. Lyndi reminisces on her past, and these memory fragments give us a reason to root for her that her profile doesn't really sell well just by personifying her in a more In Character way. She's been shaking up by the sight of a corpse, and now she's taking steps to get away from it. In a way, the move to Hellmurder Island from New York is the second great big move in her life, and juxtaposing her memory of the discovery of her move to New York and the time she landed a stunt wrong is a great way to suggest this. The difference now is that Lyndi has the opportunity to take matters into her own hands and move back home, if they're even thinking about her back home, something she can't even say for certain.
An opportunity to get the requisite kill presents itself in the form of a winded Callum Hadley, looking for a girl named Beth. We have no idea what school Callum is from (because Westlands sounds like the hip trendy shoe store front to a drug operation but not the name of a school), but the answer to the enigma is definitely not Barry Colson High, because Lyndi has to introduce herself to him all the same. Callum asks for Beth's whereabouts, and Lyndi is unable to respond affirmatively before asking if he's playing the game.
Unfortunately, these questions are meant literally, and not philosophically. It seems that Callum has little to no idea what's going on apart from the fact that there are killers on the loose and he has someone to find. Lyndi isn't looking for a kill just yet, it seems; the idea of winning the game has been put off in her mind for now. Lyndi has to explain things to him—she does a good job of not being all too graphic and simplifying things down for him, showing her good people skills in the progress—and as she does so, the weight of the situation comes and slams into her yet again, this time bringing with it more tears, as well as attracting another injured boy via her magnetic powers."We're playing a game? This is what this is? A game?"
Fredrik Hughes comes onto the scene clutching at his wounds and hoping he won't run into anyone, right before he runs into two choice individuals. Also, Shinya Motomura descends onto the scene, looking for some new loot pickups. Lyndi sees the injured boy and goes over to help, dragging Callum along. Can't he catch a break, first? Jeez, meet one nice guy and suddenly the entire island is your friend, huh, Lyndi? She doesn't even see Shinya approach; Callum has to warn her about that. Shinya tells them not to force him to shoot, which is like, is he mugging them? Is this a hold up? The announcement plays. Hughes recalls Lyndi's face and warns her to get the hell out of dodge while Callum manages to stare Shinya down without a real good weapon of his own. This time, the questions
are definitively philosophical in nature. Lyndi and Fred try to remember Shinya's name, using such amazing descriptors as "Oriental" and "Starts with an S," until VROOOM"Would you be killing to just needlessly kill people? Would you??"
THE RIDER
CODY
ZOOMS
ONTO THE SCENE
fires his gun all bang bang pew pew straight in their direction AS A WARNING SHOT because fuck if he kills someone that'll still warn them to get out of the way of his sick ass motorcycle and his sick ass scarf and okay I've seen some kinda ridiculous shit on this site but this is a little over the top for my tastes. This is, obviously, going to bite Shinya in the ass, as denoted both out of character
and in character(Juuust greeeeeat I have that feeling this is going to bite Shinya in the ass <_<)
with just enough time in between quips for Shinya to pull his guns out and fire, Callum to ask Lyndi and Fred if they're okay and to ask Shinya and Cody why they're like this, and for someone new entirely to arrive onto the scene, but we'll get to that later. Luckily, Lyndi isn't caught in the crossfire, and Shinya flees on foot, his origonal [sic] plan ruined. Lyndi tries to rally her little group, ignoring in part the possibility of a return of the cycle by not mentioning the idea that maaaaybe they should look for cover just in case? It doesn't really matter, because Cody sizes up the remaining folks, decides that they aren't worth his time, and then flees on his motorbike."Oh...hell here comes Karma to come and bite me in the ass"
The new arrival from earlier makes her presence known now. Her name is Elsie Darroch, she's one of Lyndi's friends, and she may or may not be pregnant. That last part is decently important, I think. Call it a hunch. Unsure. Elsie calls out for Lyndi, who beckons her over to maybe help Fred not die. Callum makes himself useful and suggests sensibly that they move somewhere else. The read I get on Lyndi's personality is that, in groups, she tries too hard to play the diplomat and winds up forgetting important things like safety at the expense of trying to help people in the here and the now. Fred suggests the lighthouse, and they all take him up on it. Her motley crew assembled, Lyndi feels a lot more optimistic about things as they make the arduous trek to the lighthouse.
Did I say arduous? I mean they make it there without any major hiccups. The opposite of that other word I used. Sorry, my bad.
Well, there is one wrinkle. Namely, that the lighthouse is infested with a lot of corpses. A lot of corpses, there are. Lyndi retells the story of how she woke up and found the other body to Fred, all the while asking that they go somewhere else. I like how they mention the stench of the corpses as well as their sight, attacking multiple senses at once. Callum sees the corpses, then hears a scream, and is called elsewhere to find his girl Beth. It's alright, though, because we have Elsie plus baby to keep Lyndi company. Callum goes off and dies somewhere else offscreen in a future happening adjacent to the present. Lyndi goes off and wretches somewhere else, because of the corpses.
I appreciate that she recognizes her need to decompress, but it's probably not good to seperate from the group. They should probably just go inside before some other weirdo shows up and wrecks everything oh look here he is already showing up uninvited.
Okay, he's kind enough, despite the fact that he is equipped with a very, very shooty boi. Unlike Lyndi, this man probably followed his earlier impulse to go home to its logical conclusion, and is now searching for ways to make that into a reality. Lyndi recognizes Vince Samsa and beckons him over, once again disregarding her own safety. Not the brightest bulb in the shed. The others judge her from a distance as Vince asks what kind of weapon she has, and she finally discovers Chekov's Jump Rope from earlier. The conversation turns to how they managed to survive the way that they did, and Lyndi says the following."I hope I am not ruining anything..."
Relatively unscathed? Um, didn't you find him while he was bleeding? It's a weird thing to say, but it isn't really the end of the world or anything like that. The group starts to shuffle uncomfortably, like a neighborhood does when an ex-prison officer moves in with the crazy lady who lives in an unpainted house with a teenage son that definitely does not do steroids, and said ex-prison guard shoots everyone death glares and gets really testy about his property. The awkwardness threatens to continue, until"How'd you do it, Fred? How'd you manage to stay alive for four days and come out relatively unscathed?"
VAVOOOM
CODY
is back but not on the bike this time. He has a weapon, and he comes out of nowhere like an axe murderer. Dude went from Kamen Rider to Jason in record time. Vince sides with the group and decides that they might as well GTFO, as long as they take him along for the ride, and Cody gets close enough to swing. His target? Vince, to finish what he started earlier, and Fred, because he's a guy. He wants to keep the girls for himself. Especially Lyndi. Vince shoots Cody in the side while Fred urges the girls to get inside the lighthouse and hide among the corpses even if he doesn't SAY that last bit. Elsie and Lyndi, and also Vince, dazed a little, make it inside and lock the lighthouse door.
All that Lyndi and Elsie and also Vince can do is wait and listen as Cody and Fred duke it out in the yard. Vince tells the two about the motorbike, and also asks for a kiss, because we were on a roll here with the not-an-action-hero-person train and he just had to go and turn it over like that.
Lyndi, admirably, flips the fuck out on him and tears him to shreds.
Then, she takes Elsie and walks outside, and Fred is nowhere to be found. A gun fires, and Lyndi panics, realizes that Elsie came with her, and tells her to get back in the corpse shed. Fred has been slain by Cody. Vince charges into the fray and gets dropped too, though it's more a K.O. than anything. Lyndi grabs a discarded bag and takes out flashbangs, making her dramatic last stand, daring Cody to come at her. He does, but not in the violent, kill-y way, just in the violent, molest-y way. Cody confesses his love for her, and Lyndi doesn't stop freaking out, though if I were her I'd have used the flashbang already. Cody takes advantage of this and grabs her throat, forcing himself on her, but Lyndi knees him in the crotch and runs."Why are you still IN here?! What's wrong with you?! He could be dying out there, and you're cowered down in here like a pansy! You're in here with girls while Fred's outside trying to save your rear end! You should be out there! You should have been out there! Instead, you let him stay out there to die and you came in here to hide. Coward! What's even more pathetic is that you're trying to be macho about it, like you're some great hero coming to save the day.
Cody shoots her in the leg. He drags her off with him, back to his motorbike, and takes her away. Away from Elsie, from Vince, from the body of Fred, and from the lighthouse. They drive off into the woods.
vroom.
He finds a few people, gets off the bike, drags Lyndi over to a tree and leaves her there, and then engages in a gunfight. For now, Lyndi can't do anything except try to distract Cody and cower in fear of getting shot. I don't exactly appreciate how she's been punished for making a stand as a character, but the tragedy of the situation is played on decently well by how one specific character in the fight, Ryan Ashmore, regards the oddity of the pairing. Ryan was Lyndi's tutor, in a past life, and he has the context to know that Cody and Lyndi don't make sense together. Ryan makes his way over and sneaks past Cody to get to Lyndi in hopes of rescuing her.
Unfortunately, they run right into a literal trap. Like, one for animals. Cody bikes over, but kind of gets lost? And Ryan suddenly turns a little crazy.
Like, coo-coo crazy, and this is where things begin to fall apart even worse.
There wasn't really any indication, from my perspective, for Ryan to start acting this way. The whole "I'm killing you to save you" thing doesn't really hold any water, and given that he had been shown in a positive light before, it's a little hard to see coming from him. All it really was, OOC, was an effort to revive a dying thread. To spice things up. It's really just kill-feeding, though. Because, in case you didn't know what happened, Lyndi kills Ryan in self-defense. Comes out of nowhere, really. Then, she runs back to the lighthouse. Limp is a more appropriate term. It's not the best scene. It's not even an okay scene. It's better than the rapey shit with Cody, though.
Elsie is gone. Only corpses remain. She songpost monologues and improves her resolve, and moves on. It's kinda disappointing, but it's development, I guess? Megami says on the wiki page that "hurr durr Lyndi must suffer from a personality disorder!" but she's been decently consistent as far as thought process goes thus far so I don't see where that's coming from. The chief complaint I have going into her last couple of threads is that it's kind of boring, and by kind of I mean very.
She makes her way to the schoolhouse, loots a corpse, falls asleep, and runs back into Elsie through a closed door. Not wanting to take any chances, she doesn't let her in just yet.
This is character development, in a sense. She's been bruised and abused, battered but not broken, and is now way, way more wary of others than she was when she ran into Fred and Callum and Elsie and Vince and Ryan and yes even Shinya and Cody too. She's learned, even if it took her a while to do so. Predictably, an enemy lies in wait, wracked with some level of distress, hearing the reunion. His name is Michael Suarez, and I will tell you right now that he is a Bad Man, who will probably do Bad Things, even though I haven't read that yet.
Elsie hears Michael and starts flipping out, so Lyndi pulls her inside and learns that she's pregnant, which, understandable, just makes her stress even worse. Michael makes a big show of being likeable and "hey look I won't kill you" but gets ignored, for the time being, until Elsie notices and flips out. Looking to quiet her down, Lyndi decides to go out and lead him away from Elsie. In one final act of selflessness, she decides to prioritize the life of her best friend and her unborn baby over her own. Michael follows for a time, and then goes back to the school building anyways. I'm told that things don't end well for Elsie, but, sorry, we're not here for Juno today.
She runs to the cliff and finds a dead terrorist.
I don't know the whole terrorists-on-the-island subplot, or how that goes. All I know is that it sounds like a really bad idea, in retrospect.
Tired and exhausted from the run, Lyndi sits down to nurse her bum leg. How has she been running on this thing? That just seems more than a little implausible. I'm not a sticker for realism, but this seems like something that probably wasn't considered all too intelligently, but, hey, V1, am I right?
Hidden in the bushes, Angelina Kaige, one of the other terrorists, approaches. She sees Lyndi, and thinks her an easy kill. Already wounded, with her guard down.
She would be right.
A few bullets, and Lyndi is down. A dropkick, and she is dead.
Was it worth it?
...
The read, I mean. Not, y'know, dying.
Well, the answer to that, dear reader, is outsiiiiiiiide the spoiler box!
Overall I think Lyndi is recommendable, but with the caveat that she drops off towards the end of her run. However, the good parts of Lyndi are sane and coherent, a shining beacon of comprehensibility in a world of Shinyas and Codys. She actually develops as a character a decent amount, and her reason-you-suck speech to Vince is a good moment, even if it is, ultimately, for nothing.
Another one, please. Let's get this ball rolling just a liiiiiiiitle faster.
Also I want Hawley rngesus plz
And that is every review posted so far. These are the characters left.
26 - Devi Satome - (Yugi)
43 - Hawley Faust - (CBP)
92 - Chance Burton - (Mimi)
99 - Jill Gatling - (Endellion)
106 - Takara Asano - (Espi)
108 - Scott Jameson - (Tonyksin)
110 - Ryan Torres - (Jill)
111 - Toby Valerik - (Rugga)
123 - Adam Dodd - (RIP Zee)
Just hit us up in this thread if you want a character, as for those who have a character already. We'll be shamelessly stealing rules from the V3 RAT Redux, you have to tell us within two weeks or the character will be put back on the board.
26 - Devi Satome - (Yugi)
43 - Hawley Faust - (CBP)
92 - Chance Burton - (Mimi)
99 - Jill Gatling - (Endellion)
106 - Takara Asano - (Espi)
108 - Scott Jameson - (Tonyksin)
110 - Ryan Torres - (Jill)
111 - Toby Valerik - (Rugga)
123 - Adam Dodd - (RIP Zee)
Just hit us up in this thread if you want a character, as for those who have a character already. We'll be shamelessly stealing rules from the V3 RAT Redux, you have to tell us within two weeks or the character will be put back on the board.
I would like to help in the effort. ^_^
V8 Relationship Chart
- [+] V8 Kids Lined Up To Die
-
Sebastian Odegaard - Playing The Leading Man
Yoona Lee - Rejecting Society
Chanel Andersson-Joseph - Changing Her Aesthetic
Marc Hines - Lazer-Focused on the Future
- [+] V7 Kiddos
-
V7:
Relationship Thread
Appearance Tracker
Lorenzo Tavares B03 - DEAD
Pregame:1 2 3 4 5 Memories:1 2 3 4 Prom: 1 2 3 4 Trip: 1
Island: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Gina Petrov G43 - DEAD
Pregame: 1 2 3 4 Memories: 1 2 Prom: 1 2 Trip: 1
Island: 1 2 3
Jackson Sullivan B36 - DEAD
Pregame: 1 2 3 4 5 Memories: 1 Prom: 1 2 Trip: 1
Island: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Amelia Fischer G34 - DEAD
Pregame: 1 Memories: 1 2 Prom: 1 2 Trip: 1
Island: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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