Ok, so!!! Here's my entry for round 14: Character strengths at somein30, and I had the most ridiculous idea for this round. See, the theme was based around different character strengths, which is a lot of like the themes on some Survivor seasons, and the popular Brain vs Brawn vs Beauty theme in particular. So I figured I'll just do Hard mode and create my cast for a season like that: 6 members on each tribe, equal number of men and women on each tribe, and then... I went ahead and actually simulated the season on BrantSteele to see how it goes xD

What is a BrantSteele? It's this super fun website where you can fill the cast of a reality show or a game with any characters and simulate a season. I mostly use the Survivor simulator, but they've got Big Brother and even some really ricidulous stuff like Hunger Games. Anyway, I used Survivor season 28 as the template (the first Brain vs Brawn vs Beauty season), I didn't set any attributes (I thought it would be more fun if it's completely random, but it's possible to give the characters a few physical and personality traits that have an effect on the challenges and strategy), and the simulator generated the game itself (which tribe loses each challenge, who is voted out and how, etc) but also random relationship/camplife events.

I wrote down my commentary as it went along, so if anyone wants to see the closest thing to a fanfic I'll probably ever write, or see in detail how the simulator works, HERE YOU GO.

You can download it or just read it there directly, no need to have a DropBox account. It isn't written in story format, it's just my very casual reactions/commentary/analysis written "live" when I first read through the simulation. I got really into this thing! :D It looks long (25 pages) but there are big images to start each episode just to remind who's in the game, so the actual text isn't that long at all. Try not to scroll down too much cause the images will spoil you! I didn't come up with any extra events, nothing about this plot was decided by me, it was all generated by the simulator; I only wrote about what the simulator gave me, but I expanded on them with my own speculation as to why it happened. You don't need to know much about Survivor to read it cause I explained all the twists and advantages. (I don't actually expect anyone to read it, but if someone does I'll be extra happy :D)

Writing this little story was so much fun, but probably took too much time away from actual iconing cause I know this isn't my strongest set or anything, it's all over the place stylewise (at first I tried to go for a theme of "soft colours and contrast", as opposed to my usual neon colorings, but that doesn't even happen in every icon so I just kinda gave up and did whatever). I think most of these are solid/fine, but none really stand out as "wow" pieces, but maybe that's just me - let me know what you think! Maybe there's at least something to like for everyone, since so many styles are present.

CHARACTER CHOICES
In choosing my cast I considered three things: 1. who would fit the strength, 2. who do I like enough to want to icon them, and 3. who would be fun to talk about in the simulation or watch in an actual game. What I didn't care about was the fairness of the game: some players know some of the other players, there's randomly just one Survivor returnee, there's an anime character playing against 3d people, there are real people and fictional characters, some have supernatural powers while some are just human, etc.. just a completely random cast in that way :D

The Brain tribe has characters who are seen as particularly smart: Cosima is an Evolutionary Developmental Biology PhD student and Sherlock is famously the master of deduction. Sikozu is an expert in Leviathans and several fields of science, while Michael has this amazing mind that just sees all the details and can plan the wildest things. Moss is a programmer/IT guy, and Laura is a university student who is very good at investigation and clever plans.

The Brawn tribe consists of physical players: Carol Danvers kicks ass with or without her superpowers (despite Yon trying to teach her to rely more on her mind). Faith is a badass vampire slayer whose first response to almost everything is physical aggression, and Helena might be small but she's also a ferocious fighter and might actually kill someone in this game :p Linc is super buff and clearly the brawn of the operation in Prison Break (compared to his genius brother), and Rin is a super competitive swimmer. Sayid is smart enough to be on the brain tribe, but in his life he definitely leans more towards his fighter/assassin side, and he can snap someone's neck with his thighs, so yeah, I'd put him on brawn.

The Beauty tribe was the most difficult one to fill, because it's usually the least interesting. I put David in there first, he's an international supermodel and has used flirting to advance his strategy already in previous seasons. Dorian Gray is notoriously obsessed with his looks, he basically sold his soul to stay young and beautiful. Lydia is super smart, but at least in the beginning of the show she tried to hide that and lean more on her looks to maintain her queen bee status, so I put her here too. Aaannd then I had to fill the rest of the tribe with people from my favorite guilty pleasure show, Too Hot to Handle xD Literally anyone from it would be great for this tribe, but I chose one person per season: Francesca (entertainingly messy, I just loved her ok), Melinda (the clear star of s2, would be such a fun presence on Survivor) and finally the amazing Patrick (so gorgeous but also so awesomely ridiculous: might fall in love with someone after one day, there may be singing, he won't stand any lying cause that's what criminals do, and he might quit if he doesn't like how the game is going, but I guess we'll see xD).

SOMEIN30 ROUND 14
BRAIN
						[01-06]
BRAWN
						[07-12]
BEAUTY
						[13-18]

Take any you like, please let me know what you think! <3