Tarren Joseph

Name: Tarren Joseph
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Place of Residence: Micoud, St. Lucia
Language/s: English, French
Hobbies and Interests: Old school arcade machines, fencing, fishing

Appearance: Tarren stands at five feet and eight inches tall, and stands with a notable lean to the left, with one leg slightly shorter than the other. Her skin is tan and freckled, and she tends to burn easily. She has dark hair and eyes, and her hair is styled into a bowl cut with bangs that are slightly longer and curl over her eyebrows. She has a very straight, narrow frame, weighing in at a willowy 142lbs.

Tarren's lips are thin and her nose is straight and small relative to her face. She looks constantly as if brooding but smiles quickly.

Tarren prefers leggings and sleeveless shirts as her casual wear. On the day of the abduction she was wearing grey and black striped leggings, a purple tank top with a picture of a Siberian Tiger on it, a bright pink hoodie, and a white ballcap that read "Welcome Down" in red font. She also has white tennis shoes on.

Biography: Born to Jean-Baptiste and Mary Joseph, Tarren was born in St. Lucia in the town of Castries, though her parents soon relocated to Micoud when she was very young. Mary was the second daughter of Travis Cage, who was the CEO of Pursnipity Incorporated, a web development company that is one of the leaders in technology in the United States, based out of California. Her father often vacationed in St Lucia, and when Mary was twenty she moved there permanently to be with Jean-Baptiste - whom she met in a doughnut shop on one of these trips - who ran a three vessel fishing company. Mary had done some work for her father in a fundraising and charity capacity. The two remain prominent in Micoud's social scene, and try to fly back to America once every two years for extended periods of time.

Tarren is the sole child in her family, and was a happy, healthy baby. Spoiled rotten by her grandparents and wanting for nothing, Tarren didn't learn the value of items she owned until she was much older and interacted with students at school. Somewhat of a social butterfly partially from her wealthy status, Tarren learned quickly how to deal with other students socially, and developed a healthy ego with her social skills even as her academic skills suffered.

Having a fairly well developed cushion for failure, Tarren didn't take her studies as seriously as she should've. She tended to excel at language courses and essay writing classes, but lacked any talent whatsoever in maths and sciences, requiring a private tutor. Even with the extra help, Tarren barely squeaked by, displaying very little interest in developing her knowledge in these subjects.

On a trip to visit her grandfather when Tarren was 10, they took in a few amateur fencing matches and Tarren was enthralled. Eager to learn the sport, she badgered her father and mother until they agreed that she could learn on some of her visits to America. She displayed little actual talent for the sport, but her eagerness and hard work has resulted in some strides being taken and some rudimentary basics mastered.

Her other major interest is fishing. Whenever her father has a free weekend the two can be found out on the waters, attempting to fill their boat with fish. Tarren cherishes the time she gets with her father as well as the calming act of waiting for a catch, and displays great patience while doing so. Though she’s tried dock fishing and fly fishing during various trips to and from America, going out on a boat with her father and casting lines is her favourite variation.

Tarren had been interested in old school arcades since she was very young and her father would take her to the only arcade in their small town, where she would spend most of the day playing. As a reward for getting a passing grade in her 11th year of school, Tarren’s parents got her a pinball machine - Skydiver. Tarren spends hours on the machine and has perfected both her backspin and the tilt, cheating in such a way that the machine won’t detect it. Just recently, she’s maxed out all four players’ scores on Skydiver, leaving the high scores at an impossibly high ERROR.

Tarren has few close friends at school, and tends to hang out with these few a lot. Every weekend she’s either at someone’s house or hosting an event of her own. So far she’s shown next to no interest in romantic interpersonal relationships, preferring to socialize on friendly terms. She also doesn’t spend any time on social media, liking her relationships to be grounded and real.

Tarren's goal for the future is to eventually take over her father's fishing business, though first she has plans to get a post-secondary education back in the states. Her more immediate goal, however, is to work for a year on her fathers' boats and get a feel for the business while she sorts out what she wishes to major in. Her parents are happy to support her decision.

Advantages: Tarren is patient, and her semi-regular fencing training requires her to keep in a rudimentary amount of physical shape. Her training in fencing provides some knowledge in swordplay. Her ability to handle social interactions will prove a boon in an interpersonal survival situation.
Disadvantages: Tarren has no upper body strength to speak of, and looks as though a stiff breeze might knock her over. Her over-reliance on social relationships means she will have a hard time going it alone.

Designated Number: O25

---

Designated Weapon: Yellow AFL Game Ball

Conclusion: On the surface a fencer who's good socially seems like a safe shot, but then you look deeper and realise this girl is doomed. Her weapon is bad, her lack of strength will make close quarters a nightmare and her dependency on others will hinder her as time goes on. Maybe she'll manage, but what I see is a girl about to learn her ability to earn high scores means nothing on the field. - Quaker

The above biography is as written by The Homeless Beard. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.

Evaluations

Handled by: The Homeless Beard

Kills: None

Killed By: Caleb Policarpio

Collected Weapons: Yellow AFL Game Ball (assigned weapon), Pistol Auto 9mm 1A (from Alexander Latimer) (to Caleb Policarpio)

Allies: Caleb Policarpio

Enemies: Alexander "Lex" Latimer, Clara Micallef, Jevaun Barrett, Pranay Shankar

Mid-game Evaluation: You never made enough of an impact to matter.

Post-Game Evaluation: You awakened on the island with a goal. Your goals were mysterious to others and maybe even yourself. Nobody could get a good read on you, not even me, and you seemed to be doing your best to survive. Were you even planning to win from the start? Was that what you were planning? Or was this an outlet, a supernova of freedom before bursting into death?

Even if you didn’t achieve all of your goals, your story is now engraved in books, papers, and movies. Your stories, even if hidden behind a veil, are not forgotten. They left an impression on people, and nobody can say otherwise.

Was that your goal? Was that your purpose? To manipulate and control others?

Were there other choices you could have picked?

Or was that the only one you could have won with?

You seemed to have the potential to do a lot, both good and bad. Your options were endless, but you picked a path of destruction and violence. You carved it using the other hands of others.

Your impact remains, despite everything.

GAME OVER, Tarren. - Outlander

Memorable Quotes:

Threads

Below is a list of threads containing Tarren, in chronological order.

• You started here.
• You then paused here...
• ...before moving here
• You moved on to here...
• ...then walked here...
• ...and started playing here...
• ...before dying right here.

Your Thoughts

Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF: International or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Tarren Joseph. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!

I'm going to try my best to articulate my feelings about Tarren right now because there is a lot to go through. First of all, I would like to say that I applaud anyone in this game that went really out-of-the-box with concept or execution. I think it's the spirit of mini that it's a place for experimentation. I appreciate that this was something new that was being tried.

Right off the bat in the narrative, the thing that jumps out at you is that it is in second person. All of the narration addresses "you" with some exceptions, which we will get to in a moment. She wakes up and immediately sets about robbing someone and there is some narration about compartmentalizing in order to do what needs to be done to survive. This was a bit jarring, since from the profile I got the impression of someone who had a pretty easy life that was kind of lackadaisical and didn't really have much strong drive for anything besides achieving a high score in pinball. She's patient and sociable, but not that intense — or at least that was my impression from the profile. Maybe I didn't read it right — I'm famously illiterate. But in any case, the profile isn't the be all and end all, so it's not that big a deal.

So as I said before, most of this narration is done in the second person, which addresses everything as "you." Instead of "Tarren walked to the beach" it is "You walked to the beach" with two exceptions. The first exception is when Tarren sees the body of Makaria and the narrative instead says "You pity Tarren" and goes on in this way for a bit. This happens at another point as well and it's implied (to me, again, I cannot read) that this "you" is part of Tarren's compartmentalization and is how she separates the Tarren her from the "you" her in order to do things which are unpleasant but, to her, necessary.

I think that this concept is interesting but it's not one that I enjoy as a reader. The problem for me comes in having the narration being directed at me specifically rather than just assigning the "mask" Tarren as another third person identity. What's that mean? Well, The narrative says that "You" do this and "you" do that but the problem is that my brain then automatically goes "No, I wouldn't say that." "No, I wouldn't do that" because I'm not very similar to Tarren. I am constantly aware that I am reading posts vs being able to just be immersed in the story because my brain is like "No I dont. No I wouldn't. No." And I don't really know what the point is to creating this harsh separation. Why did I have to always be aware I was reading posts on a board instead of just becoming one with the story?

This second person narrative is reminiscent of VN novels (or the wink wink nudge nudge games) or Twine games where you are also the POV person in a narrative, except in those situations you don't experience the resentment and dissonance present here because you get choices. The choices make you feel like you ARE dating pigeons or in Persona or whatever, even if it's only a few choices. I am never fooled into thinking I am in the world of International with this format because I wouldn't do these things and no choices are presented to me to feel like I'm doing anything other than being strapped to a car and driven from thread to thread.

I think that it would have also been helpful to see some form of Tarren at the start of them game that doesn't have this "mask" if she is doing this to separate herself from what she has to do on the island. When this concept comes up in the middle of her story I went back to the start and it seemed that she was like this from the jump.

This has been way too long already so I will close this one out by saying I appreciate the attempt to do something different, but as the great Taylor Swift once said, I would like to be excluded from this narrative. - Carrion Queen