VOCT3-4

Entry for VOCT3, round four.

I dropped the whole Ark/Aria sub-plot, and it’s going to stay dropped indefinitely. While there’s a chance I’ll bring it back, I felt it was weighing my entries down, and any conclusions I thought of simply weren’t in-character for Ark. Just pretend that Ark saw that the tournament people now know what he had already guessed about the power his “children” have and said, “Huh. Okay,” leaving it at that if you want a conclusion. You’re probably also going to see a lot of overarching plot stuff go by the wayside unless I make it to the finals. The focus on this and any subsequent entries is going to be almost entirely on my characters and my opponents, with a little smattering of the Benefactor, just because I still like what I’ve been doing with him. I’ll let everyone else explain the nature of the Nutrions, the tournament, and the world, though you may see the ghosts of the ideas I’ve formulated every now and then anyway.
That said, it's fucking huge compared to all my other entries. Weird, huh?

One of the main reasons I wrote this entry the way I did was to delve heavily into Gertrude's psychology. Many of her actions this round may seem very irrational, but that was entirely intentional, as the causes for them aren't the obvious; most of them are her venting for her own failures by harming other people. That's why the littlest things set her off in big ways, and considering she's trained herself to be a natural killer, well...
Or you could just assume she has PMS if you don't like to think too deeply about this sorta thing. Up to you.

Yes, Muirne's trap is outlandish. Deal with it. B<

Yes, I choked Gwen again. It seriously wasn't intentional. It just...kinda happened. D:>

Also, if I still have the “awkward dialogue” problem, please tell me examples and suggestions for fixing it. I've gotten dinged on that every round and still can't see what you guys are talking about.

Oh, and one last thing: No, I'm never going to say which one of Gwendolyn's books is capable of sexual intercourse. It would be unreasonable to ask. Gosh.

Muirne and Pascal belong to Pseudo.
Visual reference taken from Skidd, on FA.