Survivor XV opinions and other useless stuff.
Well, I guess it is my time to rant about it, heh. After 2004's sort of drama-ridden tournaments, I thought SXV would be better in that department and it was, in a way. This time, I sponsored Wild Arms 3' Clive Winslet, who was an intellectual sniper and wore cowboy style clothes. I really like the character, so I figured that it wasn't a bad idea to sponsor him after all, even if I really had no idea how to write duels with him. My plan was basically to try and portray him more or less like I portrayed Cyan.
I had portrayed Cyan as an experience samurai - not the anime/RPG cliché samurai: calm, collected and focused, instead of angsty, sensitive and being able to dish out large chunks of pain in between monologues. I basically tried the same thing with Clive, to portray him as he is in the game and, since he is a scholar, to make him learn about the round locations and associating what he saw with the things he learned. Suffice to say, I stopped doing that by the second round. All those plans sort of fell through as the rounds went on, mainly because I wasn't feeling comfortable with what was happening in the tournament, both in and out of character, but I guess it's better for me to explain what happened during each round, like people usually do.
The first round was actually sort of fun. The characters simply appeared in Genosha's capital and were mistaken by mutants. Over the course of the round, I insisted for a duel against Pep's Alucard (who was having a lot of fun simply killing Genoshan soldiers) and he eventually said something like 'You could meet Seras, if you want" and so I simply forced a duel against Alucard, which turned out one of the few I had over the course of SXV (more on that later). The round was otherwise uneventful and the sponsors were sent to the next location without really knowing what the hell was going on.
Unlike the first round, the second round had a lot more to do and was easily one of the best round locations from the tournamet. In this round, people had to choose between three generals to align themselves too - Cao Cao, Sun Jiang and Liu Bei (since this was the Dynasty Warriors location) and it was sort of fun to have a round where Clive actually had a purpose and he ended up helping Sun Jiang by re-establishing the supply route alongside Jue Pi (Makoto Kino, from Sailor Moon and sponsored by Moogle) despite the impression I had that I was just sort of getting in the way of anything that he was planning on doing, but the two shortly parted ways and Clive was alone again. I think it was in this particular round that my fun started to dwindle a little bit - I had written a rather large post, describing Clive going all the way to the gate to face Lu Bu (who had been possessed by the Soul Edge) but the post was more or less dismissed in less than a line of text. That made me somewhat upset - not mad, please - over this, since the only reason I had done that was to make Clive fight alongside the others that were going to or were already fighting Lu Bu, but he was simply cast aside. Shortly aftewards, the iteration was frozen in time just after the sponsors had been teleported away from there and we were on the next round to...
Sunnydale and well, I had ideas for it, but wasn't fast enough to grab any host characters in time. I liked my first post and that was it. The rest of it only consisted in Clive meeting Ratchet and Clank and then OUka, Nagi and Makoto (again), but by then, the round was already closing and the NPCs (aside from the random vampire shot by Clive) were gone. My writing started to take a deep dive in this round and people really didin't seem willing to interact outside their smalls sphere, which in turn lowered my chances of getting any more interaction from the people that were in those small groups (groups which stayed basically the same until the final round, another thing that was bothering me).
Next round was in Fourside and Moonside, and about half the sponsors were placed in Fourside and the other half in Moonside. Me and TT ended up together in Moonside and I asked him if we could have a duel and he accepted it. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to do much in this round, since he had to work, but I worked with Satsuki in this round and made her bite Clive's neck, in an attempt to try and get people's attention and add a little more depth to Clive. This was the round in which Moogle attempted to nail Curley once and for all (after trying to eliminate him on the previous round). I was really concerned about the consequences of this, but everybody else seemed to have found it extremely funny or something like that. Meanwhile, towards the end of the round, I transported Clive to Moonside for both gameplay and story purposes while I waited TT to finish his post. The wait was worth it and he delivered the best post in the tournament, too bad nobody else seemed to have noticed that. Curley surivived and we all went on to the next round.
Leaf Village was a sort of cool round, I guess, but once again, time constraints kept me and TT from actually dueling this round too, so I decided to show Clive's 'inner self' in several flashbacks. By this time, it was obvious that this wasn't a good performance and that most of the other sponsors were either very focused on the battlesystem or entertained in their own small storylines (storyline which they had been working with the same select few sponsors) and it was clear that I wasn't doing good enough for people to really say anything about it. I was just... there. So I decided to start voicing my opinions on my posts, even if a little hidden. When the Guardians told Clive that he was alone and that his fate was to be alone regardless of what he did, I was just trying to show how I felt during the entire tournament, and I don't think people picked it up. But that wasn't important. The really important thing happened when TT and Curley tried to nuke Moogle (who was surely going to try and nuke Curley yet again) and the three basically didn't have a chance of going to the next round because of that. Once again, I simply watched as they damaged each other, while writing the stupid flashbacks and trying to place Clive in the forest outside the village so he, Nero and Alucard could fight. Towards the end of the round it became clear that TT was much too distressed to write anything and so the duel had to be postponed... again. I really don't blame him, though, as I thought he shouldn't have been eliminated in such a way. Onyx and Luna also drano'ed Procyon on the last 30 minutes.... and then Procyon asked me to help him. I agreed, since I thought that if I dished just enough damage on the two, maye TT and Curley could be saved from the elimination, since there was no way I could save them only by trying to heal them. It was all in vain, though, as Moogle, TT, Curley and Procyon ended up eliminated either. The round basically ended with everybody involved but Procyon either pissed at me or completely disappointed at me. It didn't feel good and was about to get worse.
Round Six started and I went out. I needed to go out and get drunk so all the drama and the guilt for screwing so many people over at once would go away - that and I was tired of being alone, since being on RI's channel was most certainly not helping at all. When I came back, Procyon told me that some fallens were going to try and put a few people in the finals. I hadn't even looked at the round location when he had asked, and I said OK, even though I knew it was going to be a bad idea. For one, I was almost certain that Krizak and Moogle were involved, even if Procyon didn't want to tell me exactly who was participating and that just sounded like a bad idea, especially because of what had happened in the last round. Suffice to say, I was feeling even more uncomfortable. It only got worse when Procyon gave me my targets and what I had to use against them. Once again, I nuked Onyx and Luna and that felt horrible. I think I lost everybody's respect for that one and it was uncalled for. Of course, Procyon then told me that if I refused to take a part of the alliance, then I'd probably be one of the targets, since Moogle had mentioned my name for one of the possible targets - but it was too late and the attack had already begun. I proceeded to try and write something for the round, but all that came out was crap. I didn't know what how Hollow Bastion looked like and I wanted to finish the previous' round duel, so I tried to write it by myself via flashbacks. Not only did it fail horribly, but I ended up writing some sort of retarded angst and solving Clive's problem with becoming an undead, or something, in a single paragraph (paragraph which didn't even make any sense at all). By the time the round was ending, I really started to think about just dropping out and try to get some of the respect I had lost back. It ended up didn't happening and I was in the finals. My third final, actually. The fallens' plan of using me as cannon fodder to get the person they wanted to see in the Final round had worked perfectly, and there was no chance in hell I would win.
The results came and it became clear who would win, but I continued either way. I mean, it was my third final and, after all that happened... but after three Finals, I kind of got used to
be competing against the (very much deserving) favorite. I'll never win this one, and probably will never brag about it, but three finals are really something, even if I didn't actually deserve to be there from a moral standpoint. Of course, there was a small part of me trying to shut the 'back patters' up for just a few seconds by winning it, but it wouldn't feel any better, I guess.
The Final Round was sort of OK. I picked a fight with Yoshimitsu and felt that my writing was starting to pick up again and it felt good. When the results from the first phase came, I wasn't upset and was glad the the two most deserving people went to the second phase to fight Nightmare Foxglove. While Longshot and Alucard fought, me and TT finally had enough time for a duel and he started it, and then Curley and then my net died. I got back online at 2 am and started writing my post.... and I really liked the way it came out. Many people found the round location distateful, and were either disgusted or afraid to offend people. I simply didn't pick any sides and criticized both, while at the same time writing the battle scene, even if only the people involved did. It was really something, for me. That and I wrote it mainly as an apology for TT, Curley and JSG... and yeah. That was it.
Anyway, SXV is over and I'm glad it is. All the constant back patting was nauseating and the cliques kind of got old towards the end but, all in all, it was a great Tournament. I just hope that, next time I have enough time to participate, I won't feel as ignored as I felt in this one. One of the reasons why I enjoyed RTSG so much was because I didn't felt like that at all (until the finals came around, that is) and it made me feel good about participating. Clive will probably, and hopefully, forgotten. It was a mediocre performance, with lots of highs and lows, but the lows seemed to be dominant. I just hope that, in the future, I can pull off something really good and this time be noticed by people - in a good way, of course, instead of being noticed by how much damage I can dish out.
I had portrayed Cyan as an experience samurai - not the anime/RPG cliché samurai: calm, collected and focused, instead of angsty, sensitive and being able to dish out large chunks of pain in between monologues. I basically tried the same thing with Clive, to portray him as he is in the game and, since he is a scholar, to make him learn about the round locations and associating what he saw with the things he learned. Suffice to say, I stopped doing that by the second round. All those plans sort of fell through as the rounds went on, mainly because I wasn't feeling comfortable with what was happening in the tournament, both in and out of character, but I guess it's better for me to explain what happened during each round, like people usually do.
The first round was actually sort of fun. The characters simply appeared in Genosha's capital and were mistaken by mutants. Over the course of the round, I insisted for a duel against Pep's Alucard (who was having a lot of fun simply killing Genoshan soldiers) and he eventually said something like 'You could meet Seras, if you want" and so I simply forced a duel against Alucard, which turned out one of the few I had over the course of SXV (more on that later). The round was otherwise uneventful and the sponsors were sent to the next location without really knowing what the hell was going on.
Unlike the first round, the second round had a lot more to do and was easily one of the best round locations from the tournamet. In this round, people had to choose between three generals to align themselves too - Cao Cao, Sun Jiang and Liu Bei (since this was the Dynasty Warriors location) and it was sort of fun to have a round where Clive actually had a purpose and he ended up helping Sun Jiang by re-establishing the supply route alongside Jue Pi (Makoto Kino, from Sailor Moon and sponsored by Moogle) despite the impression I had that I was just sort of getting in the way of anything that he was planning on doing, but the two shortly parted ways and Clive was alone again. I think it was in this particular round that my fun started to dwindle a little bit - I had written a rather large post, describing Clive going all the way to the gate to face Lu Bu (who had been possessed by the Soul Edge) but the post was more or less dismissed in less than a line of text. That made me somewhat upset - not mad, please - over this, since the only reason I had done that was to make Clive fight alongside the others that were going to or were already fighting Lu Bu, but he was simply cast aside. Shortly aftewards, the iteration was frozen in time just after the sponsors had been teleported away from there and we were on the next round to...
Sunnydale and well, I had ideas for it, but wasn't fast enough to grab any host characters in time. I liked my first post and that was it. The rest of it only consisted in Clive meeting Ratchet and Clank and then OUka, Nagi and Makoto (again), but by then, the round was already closing and the NPCs (aside from the random vampire shot by Clive) were gone. My writing started to take a deep dive in this round and people really didin't seem willing to interact outside their smalls sphere, which in turn lowered my chances of getting any more interaction from the people that were in those small groups (groups which stayed basically the same until the final round, another thing that was bothering me).
Next round was in Fourside and Moonside, and about half the sponsors were placed in Fourside and the other half in Moonside. Me and TT ended up together in Moonside and I asked him if we could have a duel and he accepted it. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to do much in this round, since he had to work, but I worked with Satsuki in this round and made her bite Clive's neck, in an attempt to try and get people's attention and add a little more depth to Clive. This was the round in which Moogle attempted to nail Curley once and for all (after trying to eliminate him on the previous round). I was really concerned about the consequences of this, but everybody else seemed to have found it extremely funny or something like that. Meanwhile, towards the end of the round, I transported Clive to Moonside for both gameplay and story purposes while I waited TT to finish his post. The wait was worth it and he delivered the best post in the tournament, too bad nobody else seemed to have noticed that. Curley surivived and we all went on to the next round.
Leaf Village was a sort of cool round, I guess, but once again, time constraints kept me and TT from actually dueling this round too, so I decided to show Clive's 'inner self' in several flashbacks. By this time, it was obvious that this wasn't a good performance and that most of the other sponsors were either very focused on the battlesystem or entertained in their own small storylines (storyline which they had been working with the same select few sponsors) and it was clear that I wasn't doing good enough for people to really say anything about it. I was just... there. So I decided to start voicing my opinions on my posts, even if a little hidden. When the Guardians told Clive that he was alone and that his fate was to be alone regardless of what he did, I was just trying to show how I felt during the entire tournament, and I don't think people picked it up. But that wasn't important. The really important thing happened when TT and Curley tried to nuke Moogle (who was surely going to try and nuke Curley yet again) and the three basically didn't have a chance of going to the next round because of that. Once again, I simply watched as they damaged each other, while writing the stupid flashbacks and trying to place Clive in the forest outside the village so he, Nero and Alucard could fight. Towards the end of the round it became clear that TT was much too distressed to write anything and so the duel had to be postponed... again. I really don't blame him, though, as I thought he shouldn't have been eliminated in such a way. Onyx and Luna also drano'ed Procyon on the last 30 minutes.... and then Procyon asked me to help him. I agreed, since I thought that if I dished just enough damage on the two, maye TT and Curley could be saved from the elimination, since there was no way I could save them only by trying to heal them. It was all in vain, though, as Moogle, TT, Curley and Procyon ended up eliminated either. The round basically ended with everybody involved but Procyon either pissed at me or completely disappointed at me. It didn't feel good and was about to get worse.
Round Six started and I went out. I needed to go out and get drunk so all the drama and the guilt for screwing so many people over at once would go away - that and I was tired of being alone, since being on RI's channel was most certainly not helping at all. When I came back, Procyon told me that some fallens were going to try and put a few people in the finals. I hadn't even looked at the round location when he had asked, and I said OK, even though I knew it was going to be a bad idea. For one, I was almost certain that Krizak and Moogle were involved, even if Procyon didn't want to tell me exactly who was participating and that just sounded like a bad idea, especially because of what had happened in the last round. Suffice to say, I was feeling even more uncomfortable. It only got worse when Procyon gave me my targets and what I had to use against them. Once again, I nuked Onyx and Luna and that felt horrible. I think I lost everybody's respect for that one and it was uncalled for. Of course, Procyon then told me that if I refused to take a part of the alliance, then I'd probably be one of the targets, since Moogle had mentioned my name for one of the possible targets - but it was too late and the attack had already begun. I proceeded to try and write something for the round, but all that came out was crap. I didn't know what how Hollow Bastion looked like and I wanted to finish the previous' round duel, so I tried to write it by myself via flashbacks. Not only did it fail horribly, but I ended up writing some sort of retarded angst and solving Clive's problem with becoming an undead, or something, in a single paragraph (paragraph which didn't even make any sense at all). By the time the round was ending, I really started to think about just dropping out and try to get some of the respect I had lost back. It ended up didn't happening and I was in the finals. My third final, actually. The fallens' plan of using me as cannon fodder to get the person they wanted to see in the Final round had worked perfectly, and there was no chance in hell I would win.
The results came and it became clear who would win, but I continued either way. I mean, it was my third final and, after all that happened... but after three Finals, I kind of got used to
be competing against the (very much deserving) favorite. I'll never win this one, and probably will never brag about it, but three finals are really something, even if I didn't actually deserve to be there from a moral standpoint. Of course, there was a small part of me trying to shut the 'back patters' up for just a few seconds by winning it, but it wouldn't feel any better, I guess.
The Final Round was sort of OK. I picked a fight with Yoshimitsu and felt that my writing was starting to pick up again and it felt good. When the results from the first phase came, I wasn't upset and was glad the the two most deserving people went to the second phase to fight Nightmare Foxglove. While Longshot and Alucard fought, me and TT finally had enough time for a duel and he started it, and then Curley and then my net died. I got back online at 2 am and started writing my post.... and I really liked the way it came out. Many people found the round location distateful, and were either disgusted or afraid to offend people. I simply didn't pick any sides and criticized both, while at the same time writing the battle scene, even if only the people involved did. It was really something, for me. That and I wrote it mainly as an apology for TT, Curley and JSG... and yeah. That was it.
Anyway, SXV is over and I'm glad it is. All the constant back patting was nauseating and the cliques kind of got old towards the end but, all in all, it was a great Tournament. I just hope that, next time I have enough time to participate, I won't feel as ignored as I felt in this one. One of the reasons why I enjoyed RTSG so much was because I didn't felt like that at all (until the finals came around, that is) and it made me feel good about participating. Clive will probably, and hopefully, forgotten. It was a mediocre performance, with lots of highs and lows, but the lows seemed to be dominant. I just hope that, in the future, I can pull off something really good and this time be noticed by people - in a good way, of course, instead of being noticed by how much damage I can dish out.