Unofficial INTL Accolades Club/Discussion Thread

[Dogs231]

Favorite Quote: "It's nutboy."

Favorite Post: Nutboy's nut rant and Leander's discussion of military superstition are both really great, and tie for first in my view.

Favorite Location: The Rocky Shore. It has served as the crux for several of the major events of the island. While at first a seemingly-standard island location, it has been defined by the stories that occurred within it. I happen to have a heaping helping of bias as well, due to the importance of the location in Lex's story.

[Brackie]

back to our regularly scheduled program

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[size=125][u][b]Characters[/b][/u][/size]

[b]Best Character Development:[/b] What character development has kept you intrigued?

[b]Best Game Impact:[/b] Which character do you feel has brought the most positive development to the game as a whole, outside their specific storyline?

[+] my take

Best Character Development: In terms of getting from one character beat to another, the one with the most dynamic range within the two is probably Philia Constantinou for me. It says a lot that I've been here for nearly 12 years and yet WorldCat managed to take the arc that I was trying to go for with my International character and do it way more efficiently.

Best Game Impact: Fabiano Vecoli despite his relatively short time in the game compared to where we are now managed to really get the ball rolling in a high impact way. Early important scuffle, the very first kill, taking full advantage of the unique International situation compared to other SOTFs, all the while letting his lesser instincts rule him...it's pretty great.

[Dogs231]

Characters

Best Character Development: I'm going to leave this blank for now and return to it later.

Best Game Impact: Far and away, I'd say Tarren Joseph has knocked over the most dominos. Her string of robberies and direct influence over several kills resulted in almost every story on the island tying back to her in some way, no matter how minute. If it wasn't for Tarren, International would be a very different story.

[MurderWeasel]

Favorite Quote: Possibly because I just recently read it, and not quite a proper quote, but the description of Seychelle laughing despite her throat wound really struck me.

Favorite Post: Pranay's incredibly strange introduction really stood out to me, establishing him as a sort of quieter, pettier villain than a lot of what we've seen; I kind of wish he'd gotten more time because wow, what a first impression.

Favorite Location: I'm a big fan of awful obstacles to navigation, and everyone in the version has done a great job selling the underground cave as a horrible place to go that's best avoided unless you have no choice. I love people remembering to use darkness in their posts, and this area is full of that.

Characters

Best Character Development: What character development has kept you intrigued? I've really enjoyed Jen's journey across the island and three different handlers as she steadily becomes more suspicious and cautious while also being more comfortable with personal proactivity. It's not super common that a character passes through this many hands and I end up down with all of them and also feeling like there's logic and consistency to her story; I think a cool point is that each handover occurs right around the point of a major change for her, which helps smooth the progression IC.

Best Game Impact: Which character do you feel has brought the most positive development to the game as a whole, outside their specific storyline? Ajay has been a fascinating force of both resistance to the game and escalation. To his friends and group, he's been a guiding figure, more inured to the violence than they are, but when challenged by outsiders he has been quick to threaten and escalate, creating a dynamic that sees every encounter he has go somewhere interesting. He's interacted with over half of the characters left in the game.

[Brackie]

actually "regularly scheduled" from this point on

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[b]Best Innovation:[/b] Which character has been a breath of fresh air for you?

[b]Best Realism:[/b] Which character is really grounded in reality in a way you find appealing?

[MurderWeasel]

Best Innovation: Which character has been a breath of fresh air for you? INTL has had a lot of cool unusual stuff going along, but for this one I have to give the nod to a character who managed to do something like what I failed at long ago and make it work: Lex Latimer, who plays a very intricate game with what his narrative does and does not reveal, not keeping thoughts entirely out of play, but precisely judging how far we're allowed in, in a way that gives us great impressions of him but few clean answers.

Best Realism: Which character is really grounded in reality in a way you find appealing? Jevaun Barrett did a great job of being the normal, sane guy in a world gone mad, utterly out of his depth and surrounded by people better suited to the environment they found themselves in. It made his journey especially tragic, particularly given that one of his closest "friends" was setting him up and he never even realized it.

[Brackie]

(apologies for the delay once again, haven't had the time but I do now)(will be doing one extra each day to make up for it)

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[b]Best Heroic Character:[/b] Which good guy has you solidly on their side?

[b]Best Villainous Character:[/b] Who is your favorite ne'er-do-well?

[b]Best Tragic Character:[/b] Whose sad and inevitable fate have you most enjoyed lamenting?

[MurderWeasel]

Best Heroic Character: Which good guy has you solidly on their side? So this leans harder on the "I like this character" angle than the "actually a hero" angle, but I do feel that Austin Song has gotten a protagonist edit, as it were, and a lot of his internal turmoil has been over trying to hype himself up to do the bad things he thinks may let him survive. There's just this vibe about him that he's not a bad guy, and in his encounters with others he's tried to be helpful or to push back at those taking advantage of the weaker.

Best Villainous Character: Who is your favorite ne'er-do-well? I'm going to go with a pair here, for a reason: I really enjoyed the duo of Tarren Joseph and Caleb Policarpio for their unconventional slide into an alliance on this almost instinctual level, followed by their reign of semi-functional terror as they robbed and shot folks. A partnership built on such shaky foundations was never going to last, and sure enough before too long things started to crumble and they were swept away.

Best Tragic Character: Whose sad and inevitable fate have you most enjoyed lamenting? Condor did a really great job making Artie Qiu's predicament a constant source of oncoming doom. How can someone who can't walk unassisted hope to outrun Danger Zones, players, and the general violence of the game? She can't, of course. But Artie was always characterized with a cleverness and sympathy that made me hope she might somehow dodge the inevitable a little longer.

[Brackie]

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[b]Best Humorous Character:[/b] Which character made you laugh the most? (And we don't mean "unintentionally". Be nice!)

[b]Best Tactics:[/b] Through elimination of the competition or a solid plan for survival, who's kept you interested in their struggle to make it back home?

[b]The Sympathy Award:[/b] Which character did you feel the most for, and most want good things for?

[MurderWeasel]

Best Humorous Character: Which character made you laugh the most? (And we don't mean "unintentionally". Be nice!) This has to be Harun Tee, under both handlers. Harun has a very funny internal narrative ("the crutch that was now up for grabs" still makes me chuckle) and also plays well off of other characters (the adoption of "nutboy" by his internal monologue). It's also really impressive how well this translated through the adoption, because landing jokes is one of the hardest things to do in SOTF.

Best Tactics: Through elimination of the competition or a solid plan for survival, who's kept you interested in their struggle to make it back home? So there's been a little unnecessary chest-thumping, but of the students who've turned to violence, Ajay Bachmeyer stands out for being one of the very few with both a real understanding of the implications and a measure of experience that can translate into success. He sells his status as a dangerous fight-finisher.

The Sympathy Award: Which character did you feel the most for, and most want good things for? Half the cast, but in the interest of spreading the love around a little I'm going to say that Kami did a great job making Katherine Thomas come off as someone stuck in a situation she really didn't deserve, particularly at the end when fate brings her down out of nowhere.

[Brackie]

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[b]The Empathy Award:[/b] Which character could you most easily put yourself in the shoes of?

[b]The Gone-Too-Soon Award:[/b] Which deceased character should have stuck around a little longer?

[b]The He-Had-It-Coming Award:[/b] Who best earned their (possibly still forthcoming) demise?

[b]The Everything Else Award:[/b] If it doesn't fit anywhere above but you want to give it a shoutout, put it here.

[Brackie]

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[size=125][u][b]Scenes and Deaths[/b][/u][/size]

[b]Best Tragedy:[/b] Which scene or death made you the most teary eyed?

[b]The Stomach-Churner:[/b] Which scene or death has most effectively played with the gory/violent/overall disturbing side of the game?

[b]Best Impact:[/b] Which scene or death do you think best played a positive role in changing the course of the game?

[b]Best Comedy:[/b] Which scene or death served as the best comic relief?

[MurderWeasel]

The Empathy Award: Which character could you most easily put yourself in the shoes of? Archie Harper was generally just someone who tried to be decent and work with what he was given, which isn't a super high bar but is something I feel and also saw him punished severely.

The Gone-Too-Soon Award: Which deceased character should have stuck around a little longer? Fabiano Vecoli was a real sneaky jerk, and yet for that he had a fascinating build towards villainy and was part of some great scenes. I would've loved for him to get more space to properly blossom into an antagonistic force in the late game.

The He-Had-It-Coming Award: Who best earned their (possibly still forthcoming) demise? Zander Lin more or less defined biting the hand that fed him. At every turn, he picked fights and caused trouble, and as he hurtled recklessly towards his death he even seemed to know he might've misplayed, but he rolled the dice and suffered the consequences.

The Everything Else Award: If it doesn't fit anywhere above but you want to give it a shoutout, put it here. I usually put a lot of stuff here but am drawing a blank. May fill it in later if I feel like it.

Scenes and Deaths

Best Tragedy: Which scene or death made you the most teary eyed? A recent one, but Philia and Ajay vs. Jen and Austin is particularly tragic because the core of the feud is between the ones who walk away from it, while the casualties are both just trying to do what's best for their partners without fully understanding what they're getting into.

The Stomach-Churner: Which scene or death has most effectively played with the gory/violent/overall disturbing side of the game? Deirbhile going out without even getting to explain herself isn't precisely graphic, but there's something really grim about it and it resonated with me and stuck for a good while.

Best Impact: Which scene or death do you think best played a positive role in changing the course of the game? Rainbow's death scene was a key point in a whole bunch of different stories, starting and ending alliances and setting multiple groups on crash courses with destiny.

Best Comedy: Which scene or death served as the best comic relief? Lots of good stuff but Jaxon trying to use poison ivy gloves has this very improvised-V3-weapon energy to it, especially since it never, ever works out. I appreciate the relatively straight narrative face even as the absurdity unfolds.