User blog comment:Rhonda the stalker fan!/Rhonda's Random Rankings/@comment-1874924-20181223170236

(I've made several attempts to post this response, but the wiki is fickle that way.)

Well, this was a nice Christmas present. Not many surprises in the rankings, because you've posted detailed reviews for most of LTDI's chapters and have given me many of your thoughts on various characters. For example, I've long known that you love my portrayal of Sadie, who was indeed the breakout character despite not even lasting as long in LTDI as she did in canon. What a character ranking provides is "big picture" commentary on the characters, whereas chapter reviews, however detailed, tend to focus on ... well, the chapter. (Imagine that!)

As for the characters bringing up the rear, the tyranny of rankings is that even if you like everyone (as you seem to), somebody has to be at the bottom. (Dead last, indeed.) I'm not at all surprised to see Harold at the bottom simply because his run was so short that he didn't get a chance to do much. Likewise with Geoff. The party king had his moments, but LTDI's footnotes openly acknowledge that he was largely a filler character who left when he did for no other reason that because that was the last open spot when I was setting the elimination order. Ironically, my favorite Harold scene was with Geoff, when they were sizing up the girlfriend potential of their female teammates.

As for showing you a body, it's been seven weeks in-universe. At this point, we'd be talking about remains, not a body.

You have Trent at #10. Shouldn't he be #9? Granted, that won't be an issue if he get eliminated (in which case he'll probably have a big drop) or if he survives past the Round of Nine, but still.

Now that you mention it, Gwen's travails have indeed been a lot like Katie's, although Gwen's scars are more physical. Apart from her maimed hand, the type of shoulder injury she suffered (which actually had more impact on her challenge performance) tends to leave a permanent knot at the top. Gwen has been more a supporting character, though, whereas Katie is clearly one of the mains (so far, anyway ...) so I'm not surprised you ranked Katie higher.

Segregating the eliminated campers from those still in the game tends to cloud the overall ranking (as you have noted in a few places, and not just with LTDI) and can add an additional spoiler element as you get closer to the end, but I can certainly see why you do it. Once a contestant is eliminated, they probably won't get the chance to do much to affect their ranking.

Curious thing about your chart: with the purely alphabetical listing, I had never noticed how cleanly the teams were segregated by the names of their members. Eight of the first nine were on the Eagles; and on the back half, eight in a row were on the Muskies. (By the by, Tyler's name block should be Muskie green, not Eagle red, and Beth's rank is incorrect on the chart.) The canonical teams show a similar effect, of course, but less pronounced because Beth and Izzy were on the Gophers, with Katie and Sadie on the Bass.

I will be most interested to see how your ranking changes over the next few chapters, which are going to shake things up a bit.