The Magical Mystery Tour
So, now that I've gotten the slightest bit of distance to it, I figure it's time I wrote something about Eternity: Spellbound myself, the second Eternity tournament I've been a co-host in.
The fact of the matter is, Spellbound was totally incredible. Not just because it was a lot of fun, for me, and for I'm sure everyone involved (certainly particularily so for our deserving winner plasmos, who, indeed, does have an LJ!), but because, for a while there? It sure looked like things could've been... bad.
When Spellbound started... we were terrified. Seriously, it's absolutely hilarious, now, to read the chat logs from the host room from around Round 1, because they're made of doom and gloom, interspaced with half-hearted positive commentary like, "well, it might pick up" and "well, it could be fun anyway". TK in particular was down about people not showing up. I, for my part, wrote a long and spectacularily unsubtle post where a drunk and surly Lenna whines to Axe about how much easier hosting was in the olden days - like, the contestants would do something, at least fight or cause some good, old-fashioned property damage, all on their own.
Irony, thy name is Spellbound.
It's astonishing how things picked up, and ironically, that happened for the same reason why we were so scared - the small amount of incredibly dedicated sponsors, who somehow started to write the most integrated, active, concise story... ever in a tournament, basically. It's like, with the smaller amount of sponsors, we as hosts could afford to take everything in, react to everything, and - perhaps more importantly - it was so much easier for the sponsors to pay attention to each other as well. The result was, in short, a... story.
What's really curious, to me, was that the sponsors took over not only the plot, but its themes, as well. In a swerve that caused me great personal satisfaction, the plot developed organically to a direction where ultimately, Ariel was forced to ultimately shoulder responsibility and keep his own power. In terms of subtext, this was yet another tournament on the matter of having a tournament; but what's funny is that it wasn't meant to be - but really, the sponsors called the shots here, so ultimately, when we ended up with an ending that we originally set out to avoid, I thought that was... pretty cool!.
Getting to see this tournament from the inside has been a huge learning experience, and left me with a lot of thinking to do for These Mortal Things. For one thing, being a main host has to be way different from just being a co-host - specifically, it's a great deal more pressure. Yeah, I was committed to this tournament, emotionally and otherwise, but the fact is, the tournament as a whole was not my responsibility. I didn't have to worry about the turnout, the system - whenever drama occured, I could basically just go zZzZz, and I wasn't there. I could just concentrate on trying to make the tournament as entertaining as possible, with as good a story as we could.
That, in fact, was what I was doing, I suppose. As it happened, the dynamic between us hosts settled to a sort of functionable balance - krizak was there to do the system, of course, and while tenshi_kain and kaede did a lot of the writing and roleplaying, I ended up as the main "ideas guy", so to speak. I'm not sure why; certainly such things as time zones and whatnot did hamper my other activities - thanks to a slightly inconvenient choice in tournament timing, I was frequently not around for round endings and midrounds. Even so, in terms of writing, it ended up so that I mainly wrote Axe, while TK mostly handled Ariel, Kyo had Hika, and we all kept writing Lenna to varying degree, because clearly Lenna was the Little Black Dress of Spellbound - goess well with everything.
Axe was TK's idea, but I elaborated on her background story, motives and personality, making her into more of a dark counterpart for both Lenna and Ariel. Due to this process, it was fun, for me to see the little differences of interpretation in how we wrote her. Axe, as written by TK, was more self-assured, sarcastic and eloquent, while mine was somewhat guarded and reserved, subtler, and just a little bit brittle, with her self-hatred more apparent and more integrated to her personality. Meanwhile, I think Lenna as written by me... I think we all had her talk the same, but my version was a bit darker, maybe, with more of a mean streak, scarier when she's mad.
All this said though, oddly enough... my personal favourite contribution to Spellbound's plot was the werewolf, G'mork. This might seem like a strange thing to say, because he only appeared a scant few times, but... oddly enough, that was actually exactly how I planned to use him, from the start.
G'mork's initial purpose was to set up for the Neverending Story round - the trick round of the tournament and my baby, which I recognised as the risk it was, so to make sure it wouldn't be a disaster, I thought that it would be useful to make sure there was something familiar about the round. That's all G'mork was supposed to be, really - a souped up round villain! Later we realized that having a threatening presence in the tournament other than Axe was really useful, as Axe simply wasn't the sort of character who could be sustained as an antagonistic presence throughout the tournament... or rather, would not necessarily be; it was yet another thing that we left up to the sponsors, to an extent.
G'mork was a character we needed to have, but it was my contention that the tournament couldn't afford to have another main character to concentrate on. As such, I envisioned G'mork being "half" a character, after a fashion - a character we wouldn't need to develop, give an elaborate background story to, or in fact use any more than was stictly useful from the perspective of the plot. I was surprised how well it worked - people took it for granted, at first, that he was a convenient attachment to Axe. The situation where G'mork ended up being a secondary to a much more visible sponsor character taking the main villain role - rijsg's Ultimecia - was spectacularily ideal. I'd dropped his name close to the beginning of Round Three, and I was actually kind of giddy with how no one had apparently taken the opportunity to google the name (Alas, now I can't use the same trick ever again on you).
Another reason I enjoyed writing him was that I don't recall seeing a character like him in a tournament in a long time - an enemy who is unapologetically evil, but dangerous mainly due to his intelligence and manipulations. Because of this, the times I wrote him were actually some of my personal favourite moments in the tournament - there is a special kind of stimulation to be had from writing characters who communicate exclusively in precisely calibrated half-truths (and the occasional bald-faced lie), which made roleplaying G'mork incredibly entertaining, for me - I grinned like mad each time I got a chance to do that.
The truth is - and I almost feel bad for saying it, because I think that every cloud with a silver lining ought to hide a lightning, and it'd be only fair for me to get my share - I got to do just about everything I'd wanted to, within the confines of the plot, up to and including making the existence of IRON CLAW canonical. /=D I'm actually a little astonished even now that you people took to them as readily as you did, and y'know, had fun with this stuff, since so much of it could have been there just because I thought it was fun or cool, which, ultimately, isn't what these tournaments are about at all!
There was another thing that gave me particular personal satisfaction. A year ago, I believe I characterized WitS as having been a case of the Indy Ploy - but at its best, Spellbound wasn't just that. It was something with just a bit more Xanatos in it. Somewhere around Round 4, I might as well have started cackling in psychotic laughter with how well everything was matching my expectations and hopes for how things would proceed. In conclusion, and I'm sorry, but I have waited a very long time to get the opportunity to say this, and...
Just as planned.
And that's the story, folks! But, before you go, you might as well say something about how I've aquitted myself lately, as regards the whole writing thing.
1. What do you like about my writing?
2. What do you think I should try and improve upon?
3. What new things would you suggest I try, stylistically/thematically?
4. What fandom(s) would you like to see me write for, and why?
The fact of the matter is, Spellbound was totally incredible. Not just because it was a lot of fun, for me, and for I'm sure everyone involved (certainly particularily so for our deserving winner plasmos, who, indeed, does have an LJ!), but because, for a while there? It sure looked like things could've been... bad.
When Spellbound started... we were terrified. Seriously, it's absolutely hilarious, now, to read the chat logs from the host room from around Round 1, because they're made of doom and gloom, interspaced with half-hearted positive commentary like, "well, it might pick up" and "well, it could be fun anyway". TK in particular was down about people not showing up. I, for my part, wrote a long and spectacularily unsubtle post where a drunk and surly Lenna whines to Axe about how much easier hosting was in the olden days - like, the contestants would do something, at least fight or cause some good, old-fashioned property damage, all on their own.
Irony, thy name is Spellbound.
It's astonishing how things picked up, and ironically, that happened for the same reason why we were so scared - the small amount of incredibly dedicated sponsors, who somehow started to write the most integrated, active, concise story... ever in a tournament, basically. It's like, with the smaller amount of sponsors, we as hosts could afford to take everything in, react to everything, and - perhaps more importantly - it was so much easier for the sponsors to pay attention to each other as well. The result was, in short, a... story.
What's really curious, to me, was that the sponsors took over not only the plot, but its themes, as well. In a swerve that caused me great personal satisfaction, the plot developed organically to a direction where ultimately, Ariel was forced to ultimately shoulder responsibility and keep his own power. In terms of subtext, this was yet another tournament on the matter of having a tournament; but what's funny is that it wasn't meant to be - but really, the sponsors called the shots here, so ultimately, when we ended up with an ending that we originally set out to avoid, I thought that was... pretty cool!.
Getting to see this tournament from the inside has been a huge learning experience, and left me with a lot of thinking to do for These Mortal Things. For one thing, being a main host has to be way different from just being a co-host - specifically, it's a great deal more pressure. Yeah, I was committed to this tournament, emotionally and otherwise, but the fact is, the tournament as a whole was not my responsibility. I didn't have to worry about the turnout, the system - whenever drama occured, I could basically just go zZzZz, and I wasn't there. I could just concentrate on trying to make the tournament as entertaining as possible, with as good a story as we could.
That, in fact, was what I was doing, I suppose. As it happened, the dynamic between us hosts settled to a sort of functionable balance - krizak was there to do the system, of course, and while tenshi_kain and kaede did a lot of the writing and roleplaying, I ended up as the main "ideas guy", so to speak. I'm not sure why; certainly such things as time zones and whatnot did hamper my other activities - thanks to a slightly inconvenient choice in tournament timing, I was frequently not around for round endings and midrounds. Even so, in terms of writing, it ended up so that I mainly wrote Axe, while TK mostly handled Ariel, Kyo had Hika, and we all kept writing Lenna to varying degree, because clearly Lenna was the Little Black Dress of Spellbound - goess well with everything.
Axe was TK's idea, but I elaborated on her background story, motives and personality, making her into more of a dark counterpart for both Lenna and Ariel. Due to this process, it was fun, for me to see the little differences of interpretation in how we wrote her. Axe, as written by TK, was more self-assured, sarcastic and eloquent, while mine was somewhat guarded and reserved, subtler, and just a little bit brittle, with her self-hatred more apparent and more integrated to her personality. Meanwhile, I think Lenna as written by me... I think we all had her talk the same, but my version was a bit darker, maybe, with more of a mean streak, scarier when she's mad.
All this said though, oddly enough... my personal favourite contribution to Spellbound's plot was the werewolf, G'mork. This might seem like a strange thing to say, because he only appeared a scant few times, but... oddly enough, that was actually exactly how I planned to use him, from the start.
G'mork's initial purpose was to set up for the Neverending Story round - the trick round of the tournament and my baby, which I recognised as the risk it was, so to make sure it wouldn't be a disaster, I thought that it would be useful to make sure there was something familiar about the round. That's all G'mork was supposed to be, really - a souped up round villain! Later we realized that having a threatening presence in the tournament other than Axe was really useful, as Axe simply wasn't the sort of character who could be sustained as an antagonistic presence throughout the tournament... or rather, would not necessarily be; it was yet another thing that we left up to the sponsors, to an extent.
G'mork was a character we needed to have, but it was my contention that the tournament couldn't afford to have another main character to concentrate on. As such, I envisioned G'mork being "half" a character, after a fashion - a character we wouldn't need to develop, give an elaborate background story to, or in fact use any more than was stictly useful from the perspective of the plot. I was surprised how well it worked - people took it for granted, at first, that he was a convenient attachment to Axe. The situation where G'mork ended up being a secondary to a much more visible sponsor character taking the main villain role - rijsg's Ultimecia - was spectacularily ideal. I'd dropped his name close to the beginning of Round Three, and I was actually kind of giddy with how no one had apparently taken the opportunity to google the name (Alas, now I can't use the same trick ever again on you).
Another reason I enjoyed writing him was that I don't recall seeing a character like him in a tournament in a long time - an enemy who is unapologetically evil, but dangerous mainly due to his intelligence and manipulations. Because of this, the times I wrote him were actually some of my personal favourite moments in the tournament - there is a special kind of stimulation to be had from writing characters who communicate exclusively in precisely calibrated half-truths (and the occasional bald-faced lie), which made roleplaying G'mork incredibly entertaining, for me - I grinned like mad each time I got a chance to do that.
The truth is - and I almost feel bad for saying it, because I think that every cloud with a silver lining ought to hide a lightning, and it'd be only fair for me to get my share - I got to do just about everything I'd wanted to, within the confines of the plot, up to and including making the existence of IRON CLAW canonical. /=D I'm actually a little astonished even now that you people took to them as readily as you did, and y'know, had fun with this stuff, since so much of it could have been there just because I thought it was fun or cool, which, ultimately, isn't what these tournaments are about at all!
There was another thing that gave me particular personal satisfaction. A year ago, I believe I characterized WitS as having been a case of the Indy Ploy - but at its best, Spellbound wasn't just that. It was something with just a bit more Xanatos in it. Somewhere around Round 4, I might as well have started cackling in psychotic laughter with how well everything was matching my expectations and hopes for how things would proceed. In conclusion, and I'm sorry, but I have waited a very long time to get the opportunity to say this, and...
Just as planned.
And that's the story, folks! But, before you go, you might as well say something about how I've aquitted myself lately, as regards the whole writing thing.
1. What do you like about my writing?
2. What do you think I should try and improve upon?
3. What new things would you suggest I try, stylistically/thematically?
4. What fandom(s) would you like to see me write for, and why?