@mike_itong I got your email confirming you wanted to be on the team, but beyond that, I've received no further emails.

Okay, I said I'd write up my whys - here you go.

Larina

I've never read any of Larina's work before on Protagonize and so I had the pleasant opportunity to approach her work without any preconceptions. Larina's second entry, the one written from scratch caught my eye. She'd created a character clearly broken by past events and yet not melodramatically so. Larina's Michelle felt natural in her guilt and grief and the impossible proof seemed particularly interesting, building upon the example I had set in my own post. Her thoughts on the future of the story were very interesting, falling in line with several of my own and she left many potential hooks in her text that set my brain bubbling.

As a character, I felt Larina's Michelle made a very interesting addition to the mix and as a cynic and a sceptic, I found the lack of any commitment to or real belief in the offer made the introduction ring true.


Gabriel

What I really liked about Gabriel's entry was the bleak, twistedness of it all. This was of a man defeated and with nothing to lose. For the most part, my idea of every character was that none of them would even consider the offer at first and Godfrey in particular, the version of him in my head being a decidedly wretched and weak, pathetic little man. Gabriel's Godfrey was far different and his start, with a potential suicide, right down to the defeated acceptance of the offer was so in contrast with this I was both shocked and delighted. The little snippets of information, such as the previous killing, made this character and their decision process seem very real and in hindsight, I must say this kind of defeated, villainous character reminds me of the Mayor from Tagged just a bit. His acceptance of the offer was believable and the setup for him as a somewhat unhinged, unstable killer worked really well. This kind of personality was an interesting and compelling ingredient to add to the mix of characters and I could see him working well with several of the others that I ended up choosing.

Asheyna

Asheyna obviously did a lot of research into her intro, with subtle mentions of various terms and things to make his technical background all the more full and believable. Her Elias came across as a delightfully arrogant, self-assured person, with a casual hint of healthy paranoia mixed in. He comes off as smug and amoral, to a certain limited degree, in the initial post but you get the feeling there is much more to him than that, not to mention the social engineering. How much of him is really a mask and what is the true Elias underneath, if there even is one? Lots of questions, a panicked, but generally reserved start and introduction to the offer and a thoroughly interesting character that was well-developed in a believable, solid fashion. I could see Elias interacting with the other characters I was deciding on very well, his own arrogance and manipulatory ways clashing or working with the various others in different ways.

Burnthestars

Burnthestars was the only entrant for the role of Tony, but that didn't give her a free pass. When I read this, the thing that stood out was the character development. The concept overall wasn't particularly new, my basic sketch of the character being drawn from a number of cliques, but burnthestars worked with it well. The nice little touches such as the shopping list made to lead up all the more believable and the reveal and proof worked very well. The doubt that followed tempered the scene nicely as did his reflection on the situation. Tony, being a police officer, is in a position where he potentially has a large number of resources to throw at the situation but instead the scene ends with him frozen, making him seem human rather than with him leaping into the role of super cop. As for his personality, not much comes across except I get the distinct feeling he was a older male from the piece. It's clear he's still carrying his wife's death and that he is conflicted, but overall the lack of detail made him come across to me as a very ordinary, average person. Someone fairly dull you wouldn't notice on the street and for Ten, I think taking that average person and exposing them to the horrors what is to come presents some very interesting opportunities.

Archi_Teuthis

Archi created a very severe, cold woman in her portrayal of Kamali. She struck me as almost sociopathic with her disdain for more or less everything but her work, something that came across nicely in the work. Hard, precise and unfeeling, Kamali struck me as a very interesting contrast to the other characters. The others had a distinctly human feel to them, people lost or desperate but Archi's Kamali exhibits none of these qualities. Her dismissal of the offer without even reading it makes for a very interesting late introduction to the party, should she survive that long. As a character with large resources and this sense of clean, clinical detachment, I felt she would make an excellent player, overshadowing even Godfrey as one of the monsters in the game, while also making an interesting sacrifice with her fame as an architect.

JackRubashevskiy

The Hitomi in Jack's work seemed very believable, the odd use of various terminology made it all the more authentic. It was fairly well balanced, neither over the top or understated, neither too fast nor too slow. As in the children's tale is was "just right". The fact that whether or not she accepts the offer wasn't fully defined at the end was nice, as I felt the character as described didn't lend herself well to snap decisions. The entire post had a certain dreamy quality to it that worked well with the basic character starter and built it into a well-rounded, detailed personality. Jack's thoughts on the future of the character also weighed in heavily on the decision, his comments being some of the more indepth ones out of the entries and presenting some interesting possibilities. As a character in a weak position with little resources, Jack's portrayal of Hitomi as an increasingly psychotic drug-abuser, combined with the future planning presented some interesting possibilities for future character interactions.

seldom

The Alexi seldom described struck me a similar to Tony, an ordinary guy. The scene described a pathetic, almost cringe-inducing scenario and I couldn't help but feel a burst of sympathy for poor Alexi. Seldom's Alexi comes across fairly untalented and rather unlucky which makes the idea of being offered his dream all the more reason to go for the offer, but his timid nature and the expected doubt and disbelief at such thing throws him off. Overall the character came out well developed and another 'average' person seemed like a good mix, especially when combined with the skills he has and potential ideas for the future in terms in character interaction.

mike_itong

At first, I wasn't keen on any of the entries for Yu Mei. In my head I'd formulated quite a clear idea of the kind of character I was expecting and none of the entries really satisfied me. However, despite my initial doubts I kept returning to Mike's entry. Mike went through a good deal of editing to achieve the final result that won me over and while I'm still not sold entirely on parts of the piece, the character that's been developed there stuck me as interesting. Much like Tony, Mike's Mei is a cop who has suffered a personal loss. She comes across as a competent, strong woman but one that's been affected more than she wants to admit by the loss and so is feeling a little lost and insecure. The explanations for her behaviour were interesting and I like the idea of her losing her humanity as she's trying to catch this inhuman monster - becoming what she hates. Mike also have quite an indepth idea of what might happen in the future and that also bumped up the score to make me decide on mike for the role of Mei. The Nian as a secondary character interested me as well, especially given some of the ideas I had about the overall plot. What I liked most is the good cop reluctantly doing something terrible and hiding it from her own resources. I'd imagined her as having the full resources of the homicide squad at her disposal, but Mike places in her in a position where this is potentially dangerous to both her and her goals. The effect this might have on her character interactions and also the seeds Mike planted of the development of her as she struggled against her own nature and the nature of the beast she was becoming into order to end the life of another one intrigued me.

Bill_Hartzia

The Thiago that Greg described spoke to me. The opening scene with the casual, off-hand descriptions of his tools really established the mood of the piece. The next section with Joao built on this idea of casual, detached violence by contrasting it with a very authentic feeling image of a loving father and son. Joao's discovery of the letter instantly sparked off some ideas and his reaction to it was both amusing and horrible and presented some interesting ideas in terms of what was going on in Thiago's head in a clever way. The final, casual dismissal of the offer and then the final doubt as the proof came in was well executed and made the character seem all the more real for it. In terms of interacting with the other characters, I felt Greg's Thiago, with his parental responsibilities, dislike of his job and seemingly being a nice guy, yet with the skills of a killer poses many interesting possibilities. His thought on the future of the story also piqued my interest, the doubt beomcing a plan, becoming unravelled becoming a search for the greater truth feeling like a very natural progression for me.

Atropos

It was an incredibly tough decision choosing between Eloosive and Atropos. Both entries were very strong and the characters each portrayed weren't entirely dissimilar. What I liked in Atropos' Vahide was the fact that she knew what she was and what she was doing. She didn't entertain any illusions or self-pity, instead accepting her lot and doing her job and living her life. I found myself falling in love with that matter-of-fact attitude. Miller, a secondary character Atropos introduced, also sold it for me, acting as both an interesting character and an interesting departure from the other offers by being a face-to-face meeting.The thoughts on the story, in terms of a possible organisation behind it all, the character of Miller, Atropos' particular flavour of Vahide and how that matter-of-fact attitude would play out with the other characters in the end tipped the scales in Atropos' favour.