Speaking strictly for myself, a lot of the personal hype I felt, deflated when Zero won. It's sort of continued with my two victories(Although, I would like to thank Voss for his outstanding judges notes).
I'm going to rail on this for a moment here. Zero should never have won. His hype rp's and what he's putting together for the tournament are completely interchangeable. He kills the feel, and honestly letting him continue to put out his poorly written vague lifetime styled melodrama is doing more harm than good.
It's not a matter of narrative .v promo, the promo should be the narrative, we were given a fine fine example of this between Jeff Andrews and The Vossman. What Zero's handler is doing is nothing related to anything, he can't even provide a decent context for why anyone should give a **** about his writing. I feel like his and Eastwood roleplay battles between their respective foes are again interchangeable.
Can you tell me the honest difference between what is being written for the Zero character and what Jack Eastwood did?
The difference is Eastwood used a racial slur in his roleplay. Which frankly showed a lot more balls than a tepid, bland character piece by a middle tier story teller. Boogie Smalls, and Blaine Hollywood both took a very old school approach, and they both succeeded where their bloated counterparts failed.
If ANYONE else had posted the Zero material with a different name and no mildly prominent fedding background, he's out first round, no one cares. You actually got to see this when Jack Eastwood was rightfully bounced for writing an atrocious drug deal story that resonated emptily with the judges, Slap Zero's name on it, and he moves on, slap the Eastwood character in the Zero' roleplays and the situation is reversed.
The fact that this one horrendously bad writer is more or less moving on, on name value alone(and a no-show now) makes this tournament feel booked. Which if this were the case, I would be 100% fine with. But I was under the impression this was a make it on your own steam styled thing.
I'm just starting to feel non-plussed on the whole thing, this started it. and Now honestly, I'm feeling more and more like I'm filling a slot until I come against a big name.
It's been made pretty clear, I'm going to lose to Orphan(and baring him no-showing), I'll go down to Strife. Of course this is assuming that I get past Hopper(who I do like, and have gabbed about food with on AIM several times.). Now again, these guys have rightfully earned their spots. I respect the cache that comes with being solid/goood for a number of years consistently. But lets be honest. even if I wrote the best work of my life against those three dudes, and they wrote the consistent good work they have done for as long as I've been reading. I'm getting 5-5 maybe 4-6 in their favor.
I don't feel like this tournament is winnable, unless one of the big remaining names makes some stupid stupid mistake. The podcasts more or less have backed this up. the judging has supported this. There are a lot of handlers in this I would love to work with past/present/future. Maybe I get lucky and these three pull a Dan Ryan type thing(again <3 to Dan, I also had Cobra-la pegged for a single rp) But I don't see it.
Personally, I'm playing a middle card character, I enjoy it, it gives me the kind of juice I enjoy, and the freedom to post wacky roleplays. I just wished I hadn't blown four pretty solid ones on this instead.
) but I would tell you I don't necessarily agree with what they say and what they might make their decisions based upon. Again, this comes down to my experience and what I find entertaining over say what Ford or Pete or Stanton or Spike find entertaining.
