In Which I Say Who My Favorite Of Your Living V7 Characters Is

[decoy73]

What's your favorite for me? (I have three that I control, I don't know if for the sake of this Jessica counts as mine)

[MurderWeasel]

Well, y'know, if everybody's doin it.

Also, gotta get them Toben nuggets where I can.

My favorite member of your V7 cast is most definitely Ace Ortega. Ace has a lot going for him, but I think one of the things I most enjoy about him is his level of really sympathetic, believable nuance. GHHS is a school that's pretty full of jerks, and I appreciate that Ace is not one of them. Even in Pregame, he has a generally good-natured vibe, but where it can be incredibly easy for characters who fall on the nicer end of the spectrum to become defined by that, Ace very smoothly dodges this. Ace is, first and foremost, Ace. He feels very human, and part of that is that he's flawed in a super teenage way. He has a measure of ego--not an unpleasant one, but he's good and he knows it, especially in his chosen arena. This gives him a confidence that carries directly into his interactions with others; even when he's not at all sure what he's doing (or maybe even why), he feels to the reader like he's got things under control. Even when he's having a breakdown, or smashed on drugs! But that right there leads to the other side of Ace: sometimes he'll get in over his head, act without thinking things all the way through, decide, sure, he'll pop some E at a party when he's never done anything like it before, what's the worst that could happen? Sure, he'll kiss someone everyone while tripping, gotta help, right? He makes mistakes, and they're the sort that may well have consequences, and he feels bad about them but doesn't let them crush him. It all just adds up to make him super duper sympathetic and true, a guy who's still figuring out his way in the world but is doing his best.

Also, bonus note: his narrative does a good job getting into the nitty-gritty intricacies of sports stuff in a way that even the utterly ignorant of such matters can follow and appreciate and cull meaning from. That's big; it's so easy for niche hobby stuff to alienate readers who aren't in the know, and while that isn't even necessarily a flaw it's cool when someone dodges that effect.

[MurderWeasel]

oh hello sure

A tough call here, but I'm gonna give the edge still to Helena Fury mostly because I really, really appreciate the moments in which their narrative goes into brutal, unflinching explorations of their mental state and how that interfaces with the island. It's a complicated and dark place to go--when they're looking at the situation and going, "Awesome, I can die and it won't be my fault!" that's absolutely tragic and yet at the same time is an angle that is so ripe for exploration and development and I really appreciate that it's getting rolled around in other situations and looked at more closely instead of being just the one-time beat. I'm also really enjoying their voice and narrative, the way tangents come and go and can turn on a dime between irreverently humorous and deathly serious. I like how they're sometimes slick and smooth and witty in interactions but a lot more often sort of need some time to work up to that, maybe just freeze up a bit in the face of an onrushing bereaved dude with an axe instead of immediately popping up with some way to resolve the situation. This narrative willingness to take vulnerability and exhibit patience makes those moments where Hel does show major insight and shift the course of situations carry so much more oomph, feel really earned and fulfilling. So, in short: Hel's a character tackling really tough stuff in a really solid way and one who manages to have a whole lot of presence often by virtue of not being quite as put-together as everyone else.

[MurderWeasel]

Hello hi yes I desire OPINIONS

Okie dokie, it's hard for me to quite describe just how into Johnny Silva Ruiz I am but let's just say a lot. I've talked with you some through V7 about voice work, and I've been impressed overall by what you've done with your whole cast, but Johnny's voice goes beyond distinctive and also manages to be relatable and funny and touching and insightful. A big part of Johnny's concept is that he's a sorta surly, grumpy guy who does not like the situation he's in, does not like most of the people trapped in it with him, and does not want to have to put up with most of them for a second longer than absolutely necessary. This, combined with the heavy firepower he was assigned, presents a really tricky challenge, because Johnny actually can arrange stuff so that he's alone a lot of the time. I am so, so glad that the narrative lets him do just that. I always appreciate characters who feel real, who follow their motives and don't twist and contort themselves just to make scenes they're in flow easier. Johnny is a star about this, walking off at the drop of a hat if it's what feels right. More than that, though, he somehow manages to never feel like any scene he was in was a waste. Each time Johnny bails, we learn something about him. We see what moves him past sticking around, we see how his feelings towards the others develop, and we see him evolve in his attitudes towards the game. His decision to try to survive feels very real, and I love that it doesn't really mean him playing at this stage--he's looking out for number one, but he's not unsympathetic towards others (before they give him reason to be) and he's not quite sure what path he's going to take yet, and he's smart enough not to just go guns-blazing. I'm greatly enjoying following him on his path to sorting things out, solitary though it ultimately may be.

[MurderWeasel]

Haha you fool, but also yes I'm interested

What are you talking about I'm not still slogging through the queue two months later nosireebob.

Anyways, of your cast I still give the nod to Arizona Butler. Arizona was a surprise star in Pregame, emerging from the pack due to a couple of moments of really strong characterization and really authentic high school vibes. She's quieted down a bit since then, but has not bled off quality. I appreciate that her very first moments on the island take the form of her doing something really illogical and emotional, throwing herself into the lake for reasons even she does not seem entirely sure of. While she recovers quickly and returns to some level of control, it sets the stage very nicely for her internal conflict; Arizona is a character with the potential for sudden, high-impact, potentially dangerous action at a moment's notice. She's a coiled spring, and every quiet moment where things don't quite go her way or she's forced to sit idle winds that a notch tighter, building her potential energy. Now, just today, as she's struck out on her own, it feels like another breaking point, but a different sort, more purposeful, and I'm eagerly waiting to see where she lands. It feels, to me, like the calm is over and the storm is coming.

[MurderWeasel]

pick me!!! bls!!!!

I am really vibing with Diego Larrosa right now. One of the things about Diego I've really appreciated is that, in a version largely characterized by action, violence, and external conflict, much of what's going on with him is internal and under the surface. I want to shout out a really good use of the Memory-threads-stay-open-all-game clause, which grapples very directly with themes of alienation from culture and community. His narrative in game has also often focused on these issues, and on what it means to be a child of immigrants, not fully at home in the culture in which you're raised but also not really connected in the same way to your foreign heritage. It's a theme that resonates very strongly for me on a personal level, and Diego had explored it in nuanced and fascinating ways, using it as a lens through which to grapple with his likely-impending death, or perhaps using his mortality as a lens to decode his cultural background.

He's also full of great humanizing touches and odd moments. I was struck especially by his most recent post's meditation on desire and the male gaze. The way he's conscious of such things, unsure and well-intentioned and struck by this instant of awkward nervousness which he transmutes into empathy, is amazing stuff. It's a moment that makes Diego very sympathetic, that gives a new spin to the whole situation and builds a sort of tension entirely different from (yet complimentary to) that which comes naturally from seeing a party unknowingly welcoming a killer into their midst.

[MurderWeasel]

I am wondarjen who that could be !

Your request makes me think this may not be a huge surprise, but Arjen Kramer is right up my alley. Now, right from the start I'm a sucker for a good literary homage, but moving beyond that, one of my favorite things about Arjen is his ability to react in a perfectly reasonable way to an unreasonable world, producing predictably unreasonable results. Other characters have sort of come to terms with their situation, at least enough to try to figure out how to navigate their new world, but not Arjen. He freaks out! He's scared! He goes on and on and on about how screwed everyone is. And you know what? He's right! While everyone else is deluding themselves into thinking they have agency and that things might not be quite as bad as they look, Arjen is being totally logical in his assessment that, yes, everything is exactly as bad as it looks, and it's not likely to get much better.

And what is more annoying than someone being right about how helpless you are? Very little. Due to his unwillingness to pretend, Arjen finds himself almost inexorably being drawn into conflict with others, who are all too eager to blame the bearer of bad news. Arjen, in staying true to himself and refusing to engage with the game in the same way everyone else does, makes things happen and provokes reactions you wouldn't get in most any other circumstance. He's also frequently hilarious, not in a ha-ha joke way, but in that uncomfortable way where everything is so messed up and there's nothing you can do to make it better, so all that's left is to laugh.

[MurderWeasel]

I ONLY HAVE ONE BUT I NEED YOUR HONEST CRITIQUE BECAUSE I KNOW YOU WON'T PLACATE ME ;;

My favorite of your cast is Madison Springer. I've talked a bit about how in many ways V7 is the version of jerks, and Madison is a character I'd definitely say fits into that category in a lot of respects, but the really great thing about her is that it's in a very nuanced, complicated, believable, and--dare I say it?--sympathetic fashion. Madison is someone who is easily set off, for a lot of reasons, and once she's set off all she knows how to do is go all-in, take the killshot, and deal with the fallout after the fact. And yet, for that, she does not pick fights casually or arbitrarily... at least, not in her mind. Madison tends to look for things, things she wants or needs, and they can seem simple to everyone else but they aren't to her. A simple desire for an expression of love becomes a cataclysmic meltdown of a fight, and a chance encounter at work becomes a storm of bad news, but the side of Madison less often seen is the one where sometimes one small gesture really is all she needs.

And of course, that's all a powder keg in the context of the island. Yet, for all Madison is under the most pressure of her life, in the sort of trouble she could barely conceive of beforehand, in these darkest moments it's her best side that's coming to the foreground. Dealing with Nathan is a trying, frustrating experience for her, one that recalls her personal life and challenges in ways both heartening and painful, and she has her moments, she breaks down and breaks things and gets angry, but she does her best. She pushes herself and really tries, never lets herself off the hook and never lets herself entirely give in, and that makes her one of the most tragically kindhearted characters in the game, when she gets a chance to show it.

[MurderWeasel]

hello i would like to join the flood

Where can I start with Abe Watanabe? When I first bumped into Abe, I hadn't read his opening and I was like, "Huh, who's that guy, what's all this about a gun?" Then I went back and caught up and was like, "Oh, you sly son of a..." And that's basically a microcosm for Abe's entire story, in the best possible way.

Abe has a strong voice and a stronger streak of self interest. He's so likable, so slick, that it's hard to think of him as an actual bad guy, more of a sort of a charmingly-immoral ne'er-do-well. Which is, of course, exactly how he keeps getting away with it. And keep getting away with it he does! Abe's one of the characters I watch not only because I enjoy his voice and character (though I very much do enjoy both of those things), but also because the actual actions he takes keep me guessing, on the edge of my seat to see what he's going to come up with next, how he'll manage to turn any situation, no matter how improbable, generally in his favor, then talk himself into believing it's a totally more or less okay thing to do and if it wasn't, well, someone should've objected when they had the chance.

Finally, a bit of a side thing, but Abe stands out because his voice, perspective, and spin give him good thread chemistry with absolutely everyone he meets. He's one of those rare characters who manages to use his irreverence to show a new perspective on things, and the way he sells stuff makes everyone around him come off as more interesting (cooler, more pathetic, on the edge of a total homicidal rampage, whatever) just due to how Abe sees them. He's a real asset of a thread partner, and that deserves praise.

[MurderWeasel]

Me, me, pick me!

I'm going to go ahead and say that, at the moment, my favorite of your kids is Lizzie Lebowski. Lizzie's a character who grew on me a lot over the course of Pregame, and a big factor in that is her nuance. Her very concept is an interesting one, finding her mid-redemption arc as she tries to set aside a past of nastiness to others and make something better of, and for, herself. You do a good job selling both her legitimate desire to change and the old habits that are dying hard. I also found that her chemistry with Morgan, playing out over prom and the trip, felt natural and interesting, giving both characters a chance to shine in a way somewhat different from their core distinguishing traits, offering a nice opportunity to show off how rounded they are and also giving them an actual arc.

In-game, Lizzie's continued strong, particularly as she takes a proactive role in every scene she's in. I very much enjoyed the escalation she created at the commissary, and her parting cry of "I'M A GOOD PERSON!" had me in stitches. In the scene, she walks the perfect balance of impotent and legitimate threat, and while her actions certainly fall a bit shy of heroic, they're also not clear-cut badness given everything that's going on. I really appreciate that she carried the fallout, and her mood, into the next thread, and yet over the course of a more peaceful interaction was able to calm down and center herself some, ultimately becoming a shoulder to lean on. Lizzie is a character who keeps me guessing and laughing, often at the same time, and I'm excited to see where her story heads.

[MurderWeasel]

Hell, may as well get in on this too.

My favorite of your crew is Julien Leblanc. Julien has a whole lot of good stuff going for him, but I think one of the points especially deserving of praise is his complexity and nuance. Julien is a character who has revealed further interesting sides of himself in almost every thread he's been in, and that constant march of development has left him among the truly well-rounded characters in the version. We see him celebrating Faith's political defeat of Claudeson and himself in a genuine way and we see him losing control and clobbering and shaming Myles. For all these points of divergence, however, Julien feels very consistent as a person. He has buttons that can be pushed and that provoke bad reactions, and he has a web of people he cares about and people he dislikes, and the way he acts in any given situation is based on a combination of these factors.

It's this same effect that lets him get away with committing some of the harsher Day One violence and then turning around to help mourn and pay respects to a fallen classmate. These things don't take place in isolation, but rather stem from a very particular set of relationships coupled with a clear personal morality. Julien's not always the good guy in his scenes, but when he slides, it's always for a reason, and he's aware of it and often even tries to make up for it. This leaves him a pretty likable character, as well, because he feels like someone who truly does learn from his mistakes, and takes them as opportunity to do better.

[MurderWeasel]

hi nerd give me compliments

From your crew, my pick is Michael Froese, largely for the heartbreakingly genuine grief and mourning we've seen from him. All too often, characters suffer setbacks and losses and they serve as these big moments to catalyze an arc or character direction but are then shelved, except perhaps for periodic resurgences to stoke the flames or milk some angst. Michael isn't like that. When Michael learns about and is forced to deal with the aftermath of Beryl's death, he wallows in it, in the best way. Michael and Beryl certainly had some good moments of relationship-building in Pregame, but it's not until she's gone that we really come to understand the true weight and implications of what she was to Michael, and as it unfolds and escalates it becomes crushingly clear how important she was to him.

But of course, the real meat of this all is what it reveals about Michael. Through the lens of his constant self-reflection and grappling with Beryl's demise, we're also taught an incredible amount about how he views the world and himself and his place in it. A lot of it's really, really dark stuff. Michael's thoughts veer into some desperate, horrifying places, and do so in a particularly uncomfortable, unflinching way. It's often difficult to read, just because it asks you to go to these agonizing places with him, and yet it's all the more gripping for that. Michael's narrative shows you everything, even the things that are very unflattering towards him, and then leaves you to do with it what you may.

And of course, on a technical level, Michael's narrative is shockingly smooth. Some of his posts get very very long, but they're written with a sense of flow and rhythm and voice that always keeps me interested in them, and despite how brutally unfunny a lot of his themes and narrative fixations are, his story does a great job of picking out the lighter spots and offering them as lifelines to the reader, the laughter along with the bleak, so it's never just a purely depressing ride.

[MurderWeasel]

Hi, please give me your opinion!

My favorite of your cast is Emmett Bunnell. There are a ton of things about Emmett I appreciate, but one of the big ones is how you've allowed him to be a really flawed dude who makes a whole lot of mistakes and lets his emotions take over. He suffers a lot, and often in entirely self-inflicted ways, and yet for all that he never becomes unsympathetic. Emmett makes plenty of jerk moves (the biggest, of course, being the infamous Prom-dumping-via-test-message), and that hot-headedness and tendency towards impulse has carried through into the game. Emmett plays with fire repeatedly, taunting and challenging Lornezo out of anger at the other boy's actions, and this bears horrible consequences, costing a friend her life. But here is where we see another side of Emmett, the side that's a really good guy, who cares and struggles to express himself and act appropriately but badly wants to do better. He takes responsibility for his actions and their cost, he stands by his friends as best he can, and he is shockingly willing to, given a little while to cool off, sit down and talk it out with others. We learn that he's buried the hatchet with Declyn, and we see him becoming close to Emil (which is funny and wonderful, given their bumpy tenure as roommates). And I've said this to you before, but Emmett's ultimate goodness is captured at its finest in his recent meeting with Demetri. We have an entire past relationship, and a fraught one, laid out, and yet just as Emmett enumerates the reasons he could (and maybe should) be mad at Demetri, he lays it all aside in the face of the bigger problem at hand, burying his grudge and welcoming a former friend back into the fold without hesitation or expectation. It's great and powerful stuff, and delivered very well.

[MurderWeasel]

yo

Catherine Zier is my favorite of your cast. Catherine got my attention in a major way even right at the very crowded start of the game through a truly phenomenal one-shot in which she takes her assigned "weapon," a live lobster in a bag of water, to the ocean and sets it free. This is basically the gold standard to which joke weapon draws should aspire, using the opportunity to hit beats that would be quite difficult to achieve in any other circumstances and creating a truly unique, bizarre scene while at the same time showing us a whole lot about who Catherine is as a person. In a death game, with very little hope for herself, she still goes out of her way to help an animal that's in trouble.

That sets the stage for Catherine's continuing journey. Her story is a quiet one in some ways, but it more than makes up for that by packing real emotional weight. From her decision to strike out on her own to her settling up affairs with anyone who might've known her online to her decision to try to lay a bunch of dead peers to rest, Catherine feels like a person who walks the good path without ever falling into the traps of naivete. I particularly enjoyed the way she handled helping Marco to freedom, and the subsequent confrontation with the girls who landed him in captivity; we see her calculating how best to deal with potential threats without totally freaking out or being paralyzed by the difficulty of it all, even while she feels the pressure. Looking back over her for this, in fact, I'm inclined to say that Catherine is one of the quiet protagonists of V7 so far, and certainly one who is very deserving of attention and credit. She's really, really good work.

[MurderWeasel]

ok but who is your favourite of my characters now

The sad part is my pace fell off so much that your joke can be read as fairly reasonable by now.

I will open a round for second opinions at some point, likely after the 1/3 mark--thus far, my opinions have generally been pretty stable and most of my favs haven't forced me into second choices by dying.