Round 14.5: Eliminatee Review and Predictions
This is another blog entry about the YuGiOh! Fanfiction Contest, am elimination-based pairing contest hosted by Ryou VeRua in the fanfiction.net forums. Rules can be found here.
Always a Bookworm’s lucky streak ended last round when Higurazel took everyone by surprise and snatched the last two votes of the round, effectively eliminating her. It was hard to let Bookworm go for the voters: in three different tiebreakers this season she won, over Defenestration of the Mind (now known as Mismagium), darkdragonwriter (now known as Ziven) and safa’at keruth by a narrow margin of one vote. What makes Always a Bookworm so special in her fellow contestants’ eyes?
Always a Bookworm: An overall solid performance, uneven at times
Bookworm started the contest with a bang, giving us one of Round 1’s longest entries at over 7000 words. Her Spiritshipping (Yuugi x Anzu x Atem) is a classic take on the tragedy genre: The Ballet Studio. The non-conformist storytelling she put forward in Round 2 and 3 were to me her most memorable entries: A Life of Lives, her reincarnation-themed Mizushipping, was told in vignettes and she used multiple narrators in Gossips to tell Ryou and Honda’s subdued romance. Her subsequent entries have been unequal for me, which is understandable since RL started doing her in. Nonetheless, she was able to come up with a charming, refreshing, slice of life-ish Seershipping (Isis x Ishizu), a page-turner-like thriller of a Xenoshipping (Isis x Rishid) and a short yet vivid, and slightly gory Dollshipping (Yami Bakura x Necrofear).
It’s safe to say that our lovely, upbeat Bookworm has had a solid fanbase to start with, especially in the contest itself where she is a veteran and past winner (Season 6). She earned her popularity thanks to her lively and easy to read style, the variety of the genres she tackles and her eagerness to reply in length to every review she receives. You’ve done well, Bookworm. See you in Season 9 - or maybe in Season 8.5?
Round 15 Predictions
It’s Minor Character Fest! Contest Hostess Ryou VeRua has decided that after Mako Tsunami (Spearshipping, Round 13), Shadi was the other obscure, hardly shippable goonie to appear in the contest. Due to the exclusive nature of this writing challenge (no pairing can appear more than once, not even in different seasons), and because more than fifty pairings have been used so far, more and more such minor characters will be called into play.
So Round 15 will be Trackshipping: Yami Bakura x Shadi, and will mark a sixth appearance for either of the Bakurae this season! Will you believe me when I tell you our hostess, who was and is in charge of choosing and scheduling the pairings, is a major Bakura fan? ;)
Higurazel will have a blast with those two otherworldly characters. I wouldn’t be surprised if he chose to expand on Mother, his gore-psychedelic, acid-bad-trippy Dollshipping. There’s always a way to include Shadi to any plot; his canonish nature gives him license to pretty much pop in anyone’s lives whenever he pleases. And whenever the author pleases.
Higuchimon will come up with a number of things both Bakura and Shadi have in common in the canon and present them in an elegantly disguised character analysis. Enough said.
Doubleplusgoodduckspeaker is surely dishing up a majestic AU crime thriller. Not sure whether she’ll have the two spectral dudes love each other, though.
My Misguided Fairytale might very well dab in the occult. Something dark like Orbit, her Shadowshipping entry (Shizuka x Yami), but a bit rougher. Chances are it’s going to be quite a lengthy oneshot, because these characters can have potentially good chemistry and therefore have that tendency of coming to a life of their own and never want to shut up - and because two eliminations away from the finale, the stakes a high. As high as her average oneshot word count. ;)
Place your bets!
Always a Bookworm’s lucky streak ended last round when Higurazel took everyone by surprise and snatched the last two votes of the round, effectively eliminating her. It was hard to let Bookworm go for the voters: in three different tiebreakers this season she won, over Defenestration of the Mind (now known as Mismagium), darkdragonwriter (now known as Ziven) and safa’at keruth by a narrow margin of one vote. What makes Always a Bookworm so special in her fellow contestants’ eyes?
Always a Bookworm: An overall solid performance, uneven at times
Bookworm started the contest with a bang, giving us one of Round 1’s longest entries at over 7000 words. Her Spiritshipping (Yuugi x Anzu x Atem) is a classic take on the tragedy genre: The Ballet Studio. The non-conformist storytelling she put forward in Round 2 and 3 were to me her most memorable entries: A Life of Lives, her reincarnation-themed Mizushipping, was told in vignettes and she used multiple narrators in Gossips to tell Ryou and Honda’s subdued romance. Her subsequent entries have been unequal for me, which is understandable since RL started doing her in. Nonetheless, she was able to come up with a charming, refreshing, slice of life-ish Seershipping (Isis x Ishizu), a page-turner-like thriller of a Xenoshipping (Isis x Rishid) and a short yet vivid, and slightly gory Dollshipping (Yami Bakura x Necrofear).
It’s safe to say that our lovely, upbeat Bookworm has had a solid fanbase to start with, especially in the contest itself where she is a veteran and past winner (Season 6). She earned her popularity thanks to her lively and easy to read style, the variety of the genres she tackles and her eagerness to reply in length to every review she receives. You’ve done well, Bookworm. See you in Season 9 - or maybe in Season 8.5?
Round 15 Predictions
It’s Minor Character Fest! Contest Hostess Ryou VeRua has decided that after Mako Tsunami (Spearshipping, Round 13), Shadi was the other obscure, hardly shippable goonie to appear in the contest. Due to the exclusive nature of this writing challenge (no pairing can appear more than once, not even in different seasons), and because more than fifty pairings have been used so far, more and more such minor characters will be called into play.
So Round 15 will be Trackshipping: Yami Bakura x Shadi, and will mark a sixth appearance for either of the Bakurae this season! Will you believe me when I tell you our hostess, who was and is in charge of choosing and scheduling the pairings, is a major Bakura fan? ;)
Higurazel will have a blast with those two otherworldly characters. I wouldn’t be surprised if he chose to expand on Mother, his gore-psychedelic, acid-bad-trippy Dollshipping. There’s always a way to include Shadi to any plot; his canonish nature gives him license to pretty much pop in anyone’s lives whenever he pleases. And whenever the author pleases.
Higuchimon will come up with a number of things both Bakura and Shadi have in common in the canon and present them in an elegantly disguised character analysis. Enough said.
Doubleplusgoodduckspeaker is surely dishing up a majestic AU crime thriller. Not sure whether she’ll have the two spectral dudes love each other, though.
My Misguided Fairytale might very well dab in the occult. Something dark like Orbit, her Shadowshipping entry (Shizuka x Yami), but a bit rougher. Chances are it’s going to be quite a lengthy oneshot, because these characters can have potentially good chemistry and therefore have that tendency of coming to a life of their own and never want to shut up - and because two eliminations away from the finale, the stakes a high. As high as her average oneshot word count. ;)
Place your bets!