We played a very dark, intensely emotional game of Fiasco. A rather unusual turn of events, but it was certainly fun. We started with the "Ice" setting, with McMurdo Base in Antarctica as our locale. For characters, we had:

Susan, A doctor in the research lab, she and Ellen are bitter rivals for the head research position. She recently had a casual fling with one of the townies (Jake) and now he just won't leave her alone....
Ellen, Susan's rival, Ellen left behind a troubled youth as a smuggler to pursue torturing Antarctic penguins in the name of science. She and Liam have been close friends since childhood, and shared their dangerous youth, but now there's so much distance between them...
Jake, A down on his luck misanthrope, his past as an ecological extremist has clearly caused him to lose his grasp on what's reasonable. When Susan tries to end it with him, but also manipulates him into helping her get the position, he seems to see murder as the only option...
Liam, A man troubled by a past filled with regrets. Despite Ellen's successes in life, Liam has long dragged his feet about becoming a member of society. Perhaps he sees the darkness in others too easily, since he himself is consumed by it....

While Ellen and Susan's rivalry was heating up, Liam and Jake were desperately trying to evade scrutiny from the local authorities. When Susan tried to get Jake to use Liam, his closest friend, to get some dirt on Ellen, Jake just couldn't handle the strain, and the next time he flew Ellen out to Ross Island, he tried to leave her there. Unfortunately she caught him in the attempt. In the meantime, Liam had finally decided to go straight for Ellen, and brought her a romantic dinner at the station. Soon after they returned from the island, Jake's desperation finally cracked that thin veneer of sanity, and he tried to abduct Susan so they could fulfill their love out on the ice. Unfortunately for him, Liam catches him in the act, and after pulping Jake to save Susan, returns to find that Ellen has ratted him out to the authorities in order to secure her position. Manipulating the local sheriff, Liam returns to the station where he's driven into a maddened rage and drives Ellen off the roof to her death. Susan sees it as it happens, and Liam tries to chase her down, if only to explain what happened, but instead Susan lures him into a trap in the ice, and escapes. What becomes of these sad me and women? Only the epilogue can say.

Jake, after again securing a sheath of sanity, finds that there is nothing left inside him, and takes his plane out to the embrace of the ice.
Susan, twisted and confused by the events, finds herself in love with Jake and her dreams crushed when she doesn't get the head research position.
Ellen, dead at this point, relives some of her youth with Liam, including their sad parting as she leaves for college.
Liam, alive, if not well, leaves that place of madness and seeks a new life. After the years deaden the pain, he throws his memories and mementos of Ellen into the sea, but even that is not enough to heal him.

[name fix: "Susan" was actually Dr. Jessica Swanson. I suspect people consciously try to avoid picking names of other players in the group.]

What a sad bunch!

Jake (my guy) was a mess. He didn't seem such a wreck to start with, but he went downhill fast. I expected Jessica to be the nice one, so when she turned around and tried to use Jake to get ahead (instead of just wanting him to leave her alone), he had nothing left and started spiraling. And hey, with only 4 definite scenes to work with, you gotta move that ball downfield fast.

- I really dug "The Shining" moment, with Liam (Josh) chasing Jessica (Pat) through the maze of huts half-buried in the blowing snow, cricket bat clenched tight...

- The parallel moments of flying out onto the ice and (almost) leaving people behind were a lot of fun. The eerie repetition of the same scene and starting dialog, first with Ellen & Jake, then at the very end with Jessica & Jake. Particularly the second one, since it was really up to Jessica (Pat) to decide how she felt about Jake [and therefore how he was going to react to her] now that the dust had settled. As Josh said to Pat "Your life is in your hands. No, I mean literally, in your hands." I also really like ending the scene not know whether he did it or not, so we could resolve it in the aftermath.

- Jessica's very understated aftermath, the most bitter part (in a real life way) probably being that she didn't get the promotion even after scheming against her rival, and she's stuck kowtowing and doing grunt work for some arrogant outside doctor.

We definitely could have lightened things up with some penguin hijinks (no, vivisection does not count), but where's the fun in that?