MS Survivor Rankdown: #93

[D3f3nd3r]

96. Valley Girl (Snakes) - Names Are Hard

"Nobody is, like PMing me..."

Valley Girl played a massive part of the early game of NAH, solidifying their position as the social butterfly of the game. Snakes' commitment to the Valley Girl persona was definitely commendable, but hurt as a character overall. Once on Brodoku, Val quickly turned the majority against her fellow Brohio members (Brohians? Brohiomans? Brohio is for lovers?). Unfortunately, these votes ended up being mostly uneventful.

The key to Val's story was Val's exit. While I see the blindside of Val as a key moment (if not the greatest moment) in NAH's overall story, her part in it was more of the passenger, and unfortunate victim (sorry again). The high point of Val's character arc can be summed up easily in the last moments of her game. 1) Find idol, 2) Blindsided by close ally, 3) there isn't a 3 but comedy comes in 3s.

Val was a wordy character, and the focal point of one of the biggest blindsides in site history, but didn't elevate to character status.

Snacks

Clearly the thing that started screwing with him was when I started allying with him in games. NAH and LoL were prime examples.

[D3f3nd3r]

95. Ted Cruz (Jal) - #2016

A winner was Ted. Ted had the odds stacked against him the whole game, and yet, the people in control kept turning on each other. He was on the outs the entire way through. He posted a thread when he was on the Sunshine tribe, going "Fuck, I'm screwed". Then he got swapped again onto the Republican tribe and said, "Fuck, I am screwed". And then merge hit and he went "Fuck, I am screwed". And yet he kept surviving, surviving, surviving.

The biggest theme of this FTC was "proactive versus reactive play". Ted, due to being on the outs the whole game, had to constantly play passively and just react to things happening around him. The FTC wound up being very close! And Ted played a fantastic game given the situation he was put in. But...it didn't make for a particularly thrilling game. Was it due to the theme that most of the cast blended into the furniture? Who knows. What I do know is that it's hard to point to even one or two specific moments or things that defined Ted as a character.

Great winner, but we're not here to rank winners. We're here to rank characters, and Ted was slightly lacking in that department.

Uh...Ted was the one that played the proactive game by making the blindsides before we could blindside him (me, Matty), and getting strong alliances going (Rand) that got him to the end. He coasted through postmerge despite the pre-merge hiccups.