SOTF watches The Traitors
Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2023 8:48 am
So every Friday night US/UK time, Saturday morning AU time, for the past 5 months or so, a bunch of us in Discord have been watching a relatively recent reality worldwide reality show called "The Traitors"
the premise is this:
a number of people (usually varies depending on the number of episodes, but generally 18-20) arrive at a mansion or a castle or a generally swanky location, and play what's essentially a fairly simplified version of Mafia/Werewolf:
- 3-4 of them are chosen as "Traitors", who will be choosing someone to "murder" every night
- everyone else is "Faithful", and every episode at a special Roundtable segment, must try and figure out who the Traitors are and vote them out, or "banish" them.
- we follow both sides of the coin - we know who the Faithfuls are, and also the Traitors, and we get kept abreast of their thoughts and ideas and strategic machinations throughout
- if a Traitor is banished, a new person can be recruited as a Traitor to keep the game interesting (this is essentially balanced so that there will always be at least one Traitor in the finale, mostly for dramatic purposes ofc)
- The ending of the game usually varies, but from where we started, if the game ends and there are any Traitors left, they win all of the prize money, but if the Faithfuls get to the end and end the game without any Traitors amongst them, they split the money
- there's also challenges to win the money, but they're basically just little 10 minute time fills in between the social intrigue and don't really have a bearing on anything...except, when there's something on the line called the "Shield", which protects someone from being murdered at night (or in one season's case, also from being banished, but that's just a little OP and so only happened for one season)
So I pitched this idea, it had interest, and every Friday (except this latest one and one week I was sick) we've been getting through at least half or a third of a season a night - we've, for the most part, been thoroughly entertained! watching everyday people trying to figure out Mafia strategy has so far been fairly interesting to watch, and there's such a variety of characters to follow and root for/against
thus far, we've watched:
* The Traitors UK (Season 1)
* The Traitors US (Season 1)
* The Traitors Australia (Season 1)
* The Traitors New Zealand (Season 1)
* 'De Verraders' (Netherlands) (Season 1)
* The Traitors Australia (Season 2)
* Les Traîtres (France) (Season 1)
and from next week, we'll be beginning a watch of The Traitors Canada - but, there's a lot of versions of this show already across the world, which we've only scratched the surface of. these include, of those not mentioned before: now I know what you're thinking - Brackie, that sounds all well and good, but I don't speak French, or Portugese, or Swedish, or Canadian! well, this is where one of the only ethical uses of AI comes in, because some very good friends of mine have managed to use subtitles provided for the show to and translate them (kinda roughly, but still understandably) into English! This has been a massive breakthrough just in general, not just for universal watching of this show, and I was so excited that the group in Discord were essentially some of the first people to widely test this out - but, i digress!
While I wait with baited breath for the new season to start, every few days I'm going to post about one of the seasons we've seen, probably in order, just to sort of summarize the events that went on, and my personal thoughts on what went on
if you've seen the season, and want your thoughts to be enshrined for all eternity, here's a good place to do so! if any of these seasons sound like something you'd like to watch (or you did watch some of the seasons at some point but fell out and would like to catch up), drop me a line in this thread or in DMs and I can provide a link to the episodes for your consumption! obviously, it would be preferable if you were to legally consume this show, but sometimes that just isn't an option for regional/monetary reasons, so here we are - keep in mind that I'll only be providing links for the seasons that I have streamed so far in the Discord, just so we can sort all be on the same page and avoid spoilers for those who have strickly been sticking with the streams
so yeah, I'll have a post up for the first season we watched (The Traitors UK, Season 1) soon!
the premise is this:
a number of people (usually varies depending on the number of episodes, but generally 18-20) arrive at a mansion or a castle or a generally swanky location, and play what's essentially a fairly simplified version of Mafia/Werewolf:
- 3-4 of them are chosen as "Traitors", who will be choosing someone to "murder" every night
- everyone else is "Faithful", and every episode at a special Roundtable segment, must try and figure out who the Traitors are and vote them out, or "banish" them.
- we follow both sides of the coin - we know who the Faithfuls are, and also the Traitors, and we get kept abreast of their thoughts and ideas and strategic machinations throughout
- if a Traitor is banished, a new person can be recruited as a Traitor to keep the game interesting (this is essentially balanced so that there will always be at least one Traitor in the finale, mostly for dramatic purposes ofc)
- The ending of the game usually varies, but from where we started, if the game ends and there are any Traitors left, they win all of the prize money, but if the Faithfuls get to the end and end the game without any Traitors amongst them, they split the money
- there's also challenges to win the money, but they're basically just little 10 minute time fills in between the social intrigue and don't really have a bearing on anything...except, when there's something on the line called the "Shield", which protects someone from being murdered at night (or in one season's case, also from being banished, but that's just a little OP and so only happened for one season)
So I pitched this idea, it had interest, and every Friday (except this latest one and one week I was sick) we've been getting through at least half or a third of a season a night - we've, for the most part, been thoroughly entertained! watching everyday people trying to figure out Mafia strategy has so far been fairly interesting to watch, and there's such a variety of characters to follow and root for/against
thus far, we've watched:
* The Traitors UK (Season 1)
* The Traitors US (Season 1)
* The Traitors Australia (Season 1)
* The Traitors New Zealand (Season 1)
* 'De Verraders' (Netherlands) (Season 1)
* The Traitors Australia (Season 2)
* Les Traîtres (France) (Season 1)
and from next week, we'll be beginning a watch of The Traitors Canada - but, there's a lot of versions of this show already across the world, which we've only scratched the surface of. these include, of those not mentioned before: now I know what you're thinking - Brackie, that sounds all well and good, but I don't speak French, or Portugese, or Swedish, or Canadian! well, this is where one of the only ethical uses of AI comes in, because some very good friends of mine have managed to use subtitles provided for the show to and translate them (kinda roughly, but still understandably) into English! This has been a massive breakthrough just in general, not just for universal watching of this show, and I was so excited that the group in Discord were essentially some of the first people to widely test this out - but, i digress!
While I wait with baited breath for the new season to start, every few days I'm going to post about one of the seasons we've seen, probably in order, just to sort of summarize the events that went on, and my personal thoughts on what went on
if you've seen the season, and want your thoughts to be enshrined for all eternity, here's a good place to do so! if any of these seasons sound like something you'd like to watch (or you did watch some of the seasons at some point but fell out and would like to catch up), drop me a line in this thread or in DMs and I can provide a link to the episodes for your consumption! obviously, it would be preferable if you were to legally consume this show, but sometimes that just isn't an option for regional/monetary reasons, so here we are - keep in mind that I'll only be providing links for the seasons that I have streamed so far in the Discord, just so we can sort all be on the same page and avoid spoilers for those who have strickly been sticking with the streamsso yeah, I'll have a post up for the first season we watched (The Traitors UK, Season 1) soon!
