Words To Live By

[Emprexx Plush]

Howdy again or howdy for the first time if you get here before the dead thread, folks. Bring Out Your Dead has the skinny on my critiquing for the most part, though for Living Kid critiques I do things a little differently. These critiques are meant to be snapshots of where you're at right now and where I think you could be going, so there's not going to be as much detail and I'm going to try to focus on the broad strokes unless something specific is really catching my eye. As such I'm going to be using a shorter format that you can see below.

[+] The Process

[insert segue here] with CRITIQUE: [insert character name here]

Pretty much what it says on the tin.

THE COMPELLING

What's getting your hooks into me? What pulls me forward and makes me want more of your character? What builds inertia for you and the characters you interact with?

THE DRAGGING

What's taking me out of your narrative? What feels like it's holding you back? What's having a negative effect on your pacing?

At the moment I'm only taking V7 kids. These are living critiques, so characters will be eligible to be resubmitted for critique after four sets of rolls.If you've had a kid in the previous queue, wait for the next one before submitting another one. Like Bring Out Your Dead, the queue is limited to five kids at a time, first come first serve.

[+] First Queue

1. Tonya Collins
2. Axel Fontaine
3. Roxie Borowski
4. Jackson Sullivan
5. Wyatt Carter

The current queue is:

1. Ariana Moretti
2. Michael Froese
3. Katelynne Kirkpatrick
4. Diego Larroso
5. Johnny Ruiz

Gimme gimme gimme.

[Somersault]

Tonya Collins, please! Links to her threads and profile can be found in the sig below : )

[Fenris]

hey hey hey whats up whats poppin i got u an axel, you know him, he's in my signature also, love you okay bye

[KamiKaze]

You've threaded with her. Now do Roxie. : D

EDIT: Actually, Roxie doesn't have that much pre-game. Only do if you want to like, do a memory thread and a trip thread that's incomplete.

[Tonyksin]

Can you do Jackson?

[MK Kilmarnock]

Wyatt Carter.

Heh heh heh.

[Emprexx Plush]

You've threaded with her. Now do Roxie. : D

EDIT: Actually, Roxie doesn't have that much pre-game. Only do if you want to like, do a memory thread and a trip thread that's incomplete.

You can sub a different character with more pregame if you'd like.

That makes 5. The queue is now closed.

[Emprexx Plush]

Boop boop it's a Tonya Collins Critique V1

THE COMPELLING

The first thing that catches my eye in Tonya's narrative is the sense of urgency she carries. This girl is not here to fuck around, she's got half a dozen irons in the fire and she's not doing too shabby at juggling them. You kind of get a sense she prefers it that way, at least subconsciously. Tonya is usually trying to assert control over the situation, and that also usually means keeping the pace pretty brisk. There's hardly time to catch a breath in any of her three threads but it works for her. Tonya's got places to go and she'll drag along for the ride if you wanna try to keep up, even when she's inserting herself into something alien to her. The way she breezes through the Furby re-enactment, even once a US Senator gets involved, conveys a lot about her confidence. That being said I think there are also touches of insecurity underneath it that I want to see just as much as I want to see her keep running every room she walks into; we get a little bit of this in her prom thread with Jeff and while I'm unsure if it's intentional there's lingering implication that her commanding presence is something of a coping mechanism for the chaotic life she's forced to wrangle.

THE DRAGGING

Which leads us to the downsides; part of it might be how short her game is, but I really want to see more of Tonya being still. You can't put out the kind of energy she does without crashing, even if it's in private. Seeing the consequences when she feels out of control would make her triumphs all the sweeter, and it introduces some much needed conflict to her relationship dynamics. Right now Tonya's Teflon, nothing sticks to her and that creates the implication that if something does her defenses have been totally bypassed. Her consistent competence creates a false binary that would break down if she had some more give and take.

I'm also a little wary of the way she grabs the spotlight. I enjoy Tonya's narrative, but it steps on the stories of those around her some because of how forceful her presence is; I feel like I want to see her either struggling with more backseat roles or facing more pushback on taking over. So far everyone's rolled with her asserting herself without much struggle, and that's fine but it doesn't leave a lot of room for evolution.

Overall I'm really looking forward to where Tonya's going. My thoughts are light given how little pregame she had, but she's one to keep an eye on.

[Emprexx Plush]

REBOOT TIME

it's been long enough that this can be a thread for island thoughts instead of pregame, the queue remains the same but post here if you want island thoughts for your kid in queue and/or want to swap to a different kid while I drag my feet

[Tonyksin]

Island thoughts are fine with me!

[Emprexx Plush]

Boop boop it's an Axel Fontaine Critique V1

THE COMPELLING

Anyone on my E&E hype train can tell you I love me a good bromance, and Axel has a very solid one with Andy Silverman. The decision to have them wake up together in their own bizarre fights with NPCs. Yeah I'm calling the bird and tentacles NPCs and yes that means I think they deserve their own place on the NPC roster if you don't like it you can meet me behind Denny's at 3 am okay? Wow sorry reading Axel has me a little fighty, which leads to the next point, Axel feels like he's constantly exactly three seconds away from trying to break someone's nose! Maybe his own! Danger boy! What's compelling about it though is that it feels less like Axel always wants to pick a fight and more like he is compelled to, there is a lot of implicit trauma built into his character that you show don't tell with how defensive and aggressive his mannerisms are and I'm super here for it. I like the protective edge you've given him so far as well, with trying to talk down Andy and stepping into the Lucas and Morgan fight to defend his injured buddy. He's not a hammer in a world of nails. That's a very important separation from characters in this archetype that I appreciate so far.

THE DRAGGING

So the thing is, Axel is super reactive as a character. He feels what's going on in the scene and integrates with it well. He doesn't demand the spotlight but he doesn't shrink the the background either. That's all good balance, but with how things have gone so far I have no idea what Axel looks like on his own. Where would he go if Andy and Morgan weren't around? What does he want out of the game? His reaction to the first announcement is a good example of this I feel. He spends more time on how everyone else is reacting and what the people on the announcements did than getting direct about his own feelings. I get that emotional expression is not his strong suit, but it's hard not to feel like he's reading a script in an angry voice. His tendency to bottle things up is a flaw; linger on it. Challenge it. Force him to confront emotions that he can't get out of through hedonism or violence anymore, the island is a space where his usual coping mechanisms do not work and we should be seeing new sides of him as a consequence. If he's incapable of that, I think we should be seeing more negative side effects. This might sound weird at first glance, but Axel is too composed so far. When he acts he acts deliberately and with the right amount of restraint. The one time we see him and Andy get some time to slow things down and have emotional reflection they have a dorky slap fight, and it's cute, but I want to see how he handles those moments when they need to be played straight. Otherwise I think he risks either becoming repetitive or sinking in the background despite his active presence, because it's hard to get a sense of what that presence means outside the influence of his threadmates.

I think there are a lot of interesting places for Axel to go next and I look forward to seeing how you handle him in some calmer settings!

[Emprexx Plush]

Boop boop it's a Roxie Borowski Critique V1

THE COMPELLING

Roxie fits into an interesting place for a character with her starting traits, because I think where she shines most right now is as an audience surrogate. You'd figure the horror buff gore artist would be kind of a trip internally, but she has a very ground perspective with concerns that mirror those of the average person in her situation despite being put in some of the island's more eccentric situations so far. She asks reasonable questions and tries to play peacekeeper between flaring personalities, which I don't think she's always given proper space for in her threads but I appreciate the attempts. I also enjoy the little flashes of her creativity, the nods to her make-up in her first thread and the Cow-Boy sketch that get at the start of her most recent thread. I'd be really interested to see more of that and to have her lean into that cinematography space with the areas she's in, it feels like a natural fit for her mindset which serves as a bolster for that audience surrogacy. Obviously it won't always fit to have that sort of character sketch, but I think it makes a really interesting coping mechanism, especially as the island drifts further and further from reality. You could even use it as a way for her to examine killers, victims, etc. if that flows with her headspace. As long as it loops back to her grounded analysis I think the sky's the limit here.

THE DRAGGING

link your threads, none of Roxie's exits are tagged right now and that is a huge momentum killer when you're trying to read a character in a dash.

I would love to see a lot more physical description in Roxie's narrative. As a visual artist and director I feel that soaking in setting of her scenes should be her natural instinct, yeah? Find details for her to linger on, really let us feel the blocking through her gaze. How she frames scenes should be very, very important to us, the more we can place ourselves in her perspective the greater her natural strengths become. This is a really hard task that I'm super duper bad at so I'm not saying you should come out here making epic fantasy portraits of each island location, but little things that give us a better image of the world around her like good places to set up cameras, the color of innocuous objects, where she might hide a detail that'll be plot important later without focusing on it would be great, just to spitball a few ideas.

Roxie's a fun read, I'm here for her. Will she be our Final Girl or fall to a Dull Machete? Only time will tell!

[Emprexx Plush]

Boop boop it's a Jackson Sullivan Critique V1

THE COMPELLING

Jackson has some really good grounding in who other people are, I like the way he weaves loose social connections back into the narrative and is constantly thinking in the context of other people. He worries about the social forces of the island without being a conniver, he just feels like a decently popular dude who knows a lot of people without illusions about their morality. It could easily turn down the path to playing, but where he's at now seems more concerned with keeping others safe. I think that carries the tone from his profile that he's a generally decent person with substance abuse issues and a short fuse, though we'll get to that last bit later. The self-loathing that comes to a head in his first thread feels a little rushed but I think his paralysis at the beginning of the next helps sell it. He's indecisive but equally impulsive, rushing in to help Drew's wound or try to stop Aurelien from attacking Hel and Arianna because those are immediate threats he doesn't need to think to much about. On the other hand he's not ready to stop the tense hold up with Gervais because what if he just makes things worse? A would be guardian angel who only acts when the chips are at their lowest is a compelling starting point on the island that I could see going a lot of interesting places.

THE DRAGGING

So, Jackson's only disadvantages listed lead to his temper. He is supposed to be easily aggravated, difficult to work with, uncontrollable, possibly even violent if he's pushed far enough. I don't think any of that has landed on island yet despite being in three back to back very stressful situations. We see him break down in sorrow more frequently than anger. If it's such an easy thing to draw out then I think any number of events should have at least pushed him close to the edge at this point, but even when he's written as being in a rage during the fight with Gervais he has time to pause and think about how taking either weapon would make things worse. It would! That's the sort of bad decision that would seem very in character from his profile, but he hasn't made any like that yet. He doesn't act unreasonable when taking down Gervais or try to hurt him more than is necessary, he goes to disarm him and help Cecil deescalate the threat. That feels way too calm and reasoned for someone like Jackson, as does his insistence on trying to talk Aurelien down from violence instead of becoming violent with him. The anger just isn't there for me yet, and it feels out of character between his profile and pregame.

Overall I enjoy Jackson's narrative. I think if you take him to some riskier places with worse decisions he could get a lot of fuel for future encounters!

[Emprexx Plush]

Boop boop it's a Wyatt Carter Critique V1

THE COMPELLING

It's not news at all that you're real good at fight scenes, that's been known for like four versions running at this point. I think Wyatt is a really good example of you taking the sense of physicality you've cultivated in that context and steeping an entire character in it. Everything Wyatt does has a sense of weight. I'm wincing when he punts somebody in the face, but I'm also wincing from the way he talks, the way he thinks, even the mannerisms you bring to the table from them. I've described Bret has having a quiet menace to everything he does. There is nothing quiet about Wyatt. Every move he makes sends vibrations through the scene and I think it provides an excellent amount of material for others to play off of, which is admirable since it could easily turn him into a scene hog but it doesn't. Kind of ironically Wyatt's inflated ego gives others a boost when threading with him, I feel like he almost always has an opinion on what everyone is doing which helps draw all the action together.

On top of that I think you've managed to take a voice that could easily become cartoonish and mostly keep it grounded. Even at his most outrageous moments Wyatt feels like an actual human being and I understand why he's doing things. I hate that you have made it so easy to get into the brain of this terrible boy and you will answer for your crimes someday but from an artistic perspective you've done very, very well.

THE DRAGGING

So that 'mostly' up there tho

I find the way Wyatt behaves very engaging in almost all circumstances, but I've noticed a recurring bit with him where he gets inappropriate boners at inappropriate times; y'all all know the bit, on island it's come up when he woke up and most recently when Tirzah killed Ron. I feel like I understand the intent here, and if these critiques had a nitpicky section I'd probably be addressing that there instead, but I don't know that these are landing well. The one in his opener was amusing and you could follow the logic on it pretty easily. and from context the one with Tirzah is probably less literal but still kinda literal and that scans oddly to me. It's a good bit, but it feels out of place in the Wyatt narrative, his story doesn't feel like the kind of dark comedy where getting kind of turned on by a pretty girl murdering someone in front of you works tonally. If it's a bit you're going to keep doing going forward, I'd think a lot about how it fits into the mood around it and when it is particularly jarring if that's intended and valuable.

I'm also cautious about the Carter Brothers Tour of Pain. They've been pretty high octane from the word jump, and while it's a blast to read I really want to see how their dynamic holds up when there's nobody around to punch. Especially on Wyatt's end since idle hands have a history of getting him in a lot of trouble. Calmer scenes like that would also be a great place to showcase whether the brothers are growing closer, tearing apart, or maintaining orbit as the game wears on. A lot can be seeded in those simple moments, and if Ivy Langley has taught us anything it's that both brothers have similar interests when it comes to seeding.

Excuse me I'm going to go throw myself into the sea now thank you

With that the Queue is officially open again for another 5. Second verse is the same as the first, v7 only and while i'll probably read pre-game i'm only going to be talking about island stuff going forward unless there's something I think is really integral to call back to for a point.

[Cactus]

Ariana, let's goooooooo