OC SlamJam - Finals
written by OC Slamjam
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Oh boy oh boy oh boy!
Space reserved for vote counting!
Things are going to get interesting up in here!
There are only four pairs, and he says not to start from the beginning? Pshaw.
This is not going to be easy, is it?
Oh, finals because everything's gonna be posted here from now on?
6227444 More likely because once this round is decided, the winners will have to battle Falcata until only one remains.
Oh, so it's not the finals. What a misleading name, Mr. Obs. I was almost scared to slam my jams.
I'm almost scared to read these now, because I don't want anyone to be eliminated. I like all of these characters! But, alas, the jam must slam on.
6227524
That would have been very scary. And awesome. I'm honored to be your opponent this round, Summer Heat. Best of luck!
Ahhhhh... only eight entries! It's almost relaxing! I'm already done! And no one else has voted on half of them!
6227752 You'll want to move this to the actual chapter :)
6228019 Ah, I see. Your research definitely paid off, and I enjoyed the way you wrote Falcata in this round.
6228629
:c
thats not very nice
6228669
Hey, remember when a character being gay wasn't shameless likebait for the fawning masses? Yeah, me neither.
God, I could care less who you said it about. I mean, you could have said it about anyone and I'd still be mad. Being gay is not, or ever will be, a characteristic or a character flaw. It is not indicative of some deeper meaning, nor does it show that you know how to write characters. It's just who you are. This applies to everyone who voted in this section with that little delightful cuddle session between Mango and Haystacks in mind, for better or worse.
We'll dive back into my last round here, because I'm assuming this is where you picked up this awesome notion that having your characters be gay is a fantastic plan. I wrote them as good friends. It was a bad entry and it lost, but whatever, Rome won't burn. I objected to people who just automatically mashed them together making kissy faces, because that's stupid. What - are men suddenly not allowed to have friends? Is this some kind of bullshit notion that we're all so busy tip-toeing around the pink rainbow elephant in the room that anything more serious than 'bros' is automatically classified as gay?
That was even the reason I sent you a message in the first place - because I thought you were the only person who was like, 'was them not being gay intentional? I hope so, because that's admirable.' I was like, 'oh, cool, well at least someone got the idea'. And then you went and wrote that stuff anyway. If you wanna talk about what's 'not very nice', maybe you can start there. Maybe I misunderstood you in the first place; maybe it was my mistake, whatever.
Man, I can't believe I'm so mad about something so small. I bet this is just me that thinks this way too, so I look like a real asshole. Whatever. Emotional openness, vulnerability, supportiveness, and caring has, somehow, become something unusual and risky to show for fear of being called gay. And you're not fucking helping. Good job taking the easy way out.
38.media.tumblr.com/a9fb4aab4bff63b442ba38028f4fa158/tumblr_mp14cxWu4x1r1c8h9o4_250.gif
6228899 As one of the readers who made a comment about this last round, it was definitely less about the characters themselves and who they were than about things like pacing and descriptions, at least for me. The way the scenes were written left an aftertaste of romance in my mind, so I said so. I never thought they were actually gay and/or romantically interested in each other, I just make light of things when I probably shouldn't. You might have noticed that.
Speaking of which, I took Summer's entry this round in good humor, because knowing "her" via sock puppet, I was about 90% sure it wasn't meant to be mean-spirited. I imagine it was just one of those ideas that came pre-formed and was too enticing to pass up (much like my losing entry).
Then again, if you (not specifically you-you, but you because you went up against Mango after I did) had featured Rachis in your entry in a way that clearly parodied my crazy entry, I don't know how I would feel. The circumstances would still be massively different, but I bet I wouldn't be nearly as quick to take something like that in good fun fresh off of my own loss. Actually, remembering just how defensive I got of my entry, it wouldn't have been too hard to offend me by poking the right buttons afterward.
I'm trying and failing to say I understand why you're upset. Bleh.
6229283
Couldn't have said it better myself. It's a parody, sure, but I wrote this for readers to enjoy it, not to show up Haystacks' entry as being bad.
The same goes for the accusation that I was going for "lol gay." Damn near everyone saw the shipping angle, a fact that I found hilarious. Up and making the characters gay would not in itself be funny and I realized that even before my brainstorming phase was done. I didn't even come up with any gay jokes to sneak into the story even though I was going to. With you the gayness was unintentional, so here it's real but repressed.
And for the record, it's not just because Haystacks is an sweet guy, or even because he cries; it's because of how ridiculously intense his feelings are. I barely exaggerated a thing.
I had a feeling Burraku wouldn't like how my entry is based entirely off a previous one, but otherwise I'm shocked that this has become an issue. Where's Quick Study? Come back and wrote the story where Summer Heat gets killed!
6229212
Apparently I'm a genius. What?
6229283 Nah, I'm good.
6229710
See now, here's the thing about my criticism of people basing their entries' plots on previous ones: As I've said, what I mind is when a given entry doesn't have enough backing there in the story to let it stand on its own. And just looking at that aspect, you actually succeeded, for me—I would be able to read and follow your entry for this round without being confused by its callbacks, because you included enough for it all to be self-contained. It's just the way you went about accomplishing that that I couldn't stomach.
6229710
You are right, you barely exaggerated anything. But you did exaggerate the assumption that because two men are close, they must automatically be gay. Like there's absolutely no possible reason that two people can enjoy a close platonic relationship without it being 'dude bro i'm gay 4 u but I just can't express my feelings'. That there's nobody out there who you care for like a brother, that you don't see very often, that you treasure the good times with because they actually mean that much to you. For various reasons, say, maybe you've been through a lot of shit together.
Whatever, man. I didn't even want to explain any of this. I don't even know why I'm replying. I'm just gonna go get on with my damn life now. I don't even know why I took the time and energy to think of what really fucking bothered me about what you wrote. You're some fucking random ass person online. You don't care. I wish I could say that I don't care anymore so as to be dismissive of you, but I do care. I care a lot.
6231529 Hey man, chill. Not everyone thought that you wrote them as a couple or anything like that. My view was more of a Frodo/Sam relationship. And I'm sure plenty of others caught on that and won't relate your work to this beyond Haystacks being your character... it's not a poor reflection on your work at all. It's something altogether unrelated.
6231529
Nobody has said that Haystacks is definitely gay any more than they've said that Appledash is definitely canon.
...Bad example. Accurate, though. People object to Rainbow Dash automatically being gay in much the same way you're doing here. Does that mean anyone who writes an Appledash story is guilty of being unable to conceive of a girl like Rainbow Dash being straight?
6232116 I... pretty much agree with what's been said here.
6231704 I hope you're not also voting with your real account. Of course, if you're not that narrows down who you could be by quite a lot.
6234126 Obs knows all the author's identities. Should anyone vote in both accounts, he would definitely catch on.
No one's counted the votes yet... why not.
Close rounds in bold, if you don't feel like judging what's close for yourself.
Tallies, Day 2 (7/22/15, 4:00ish CST):
Luster Lock vs. Lilligold: Tied 3-3
Mango Leaf vs. Summer Heat: ML Winning, 8-0
Ace Artisan vs. Evergreen: Eg Winning, 2-4
Firefly vs. Falcata: Ff Winning, 5-0
Wow, there really haven't been many votes yet. Come on, guys! Shortest round so far!
6231255
How is any of that unbelievable? A.) How would they know the building is supposed to be temporary, the group of them quite possibly being tourists (and/or just panicking citizens) plus a single ranger who doesn't know cities? B.) Even if they knew it was temporary, how would they know it wasn't structurally sound enough to survive a blizzard? C.) You expect them all to walk through a blizzard to their houses/apartments/hotels/etc. when there's a huge building for them to take shelter in right by where Winterfest is taking place?
6234163
I'm pretty sure Summer and Falcata have at least one vote. Like 6229291 for Falcata and 6228134 for Summer.
6235131
I want you to look real close at what you said in that first sentence. You sure you don't? Because it almost sounds like you do…
6234887 Woops. Too late to update it now. I'll just wait until tomorrow, or let someone else beat me to it.
As always, author roundup over here. Nothing much new so far this time around, just a couple new character accounts, though maybe I missed something, I only skimmed most of the comments.
It's about time we had a round without any DQs or dropouts right out of the gate...
6238994
That's actually something else I had trouble with. I've never considered until now that Elmshire might be outside Equestria and -- though the new canon map shows that Trottingham lies between Manehattan and griffin territory on an island -- I'm just not sure how to approach extra-Equestrian ponies.
6235223
Ok, so here are some additional thoughts on the story. They may be useful to you, but you should also keep in mind that, of all the stories I've voted for in this contest, only 50% have advanced, meaning I probably approach these stories quite different than the average Slamjam voter.
In my first two readings of the story, I did not realize that the second free sample Lilligold gives to Luster Lock is the Tumblerweed. This is actually a really nice point to end the story as it is a clever way of emphasizing the important Luster Lock places on her family. But given the significance of the Tumblerweed in the story, the way Lilligold casually created it without much fanfare made me think that there was no way the spell she cast on the front door was to create a Tumblerweed. Given that Lilligold had to make some pretty important insights into Luster Lock's values in order to create that Tumblerweed, it would have been nice if those realizations had been emphasized much more so that particularly dense readers like me would not miss them.
I also think that I may have missed that point because the epilogue took focus away from that scene, so that after the story, I was thinking more about the epilogue and less about the last scene between Lilligold and Luster Lock. The epilogue still feels out of place. The first half of the story focuses solely on Lilligold and the prologue clearly establishes that the main conflict is Lilligold's Gardener's Block. Because the structure of the story emphasizes Lilligold's character much more, it's strange that the focus shifts to Luster Lock at the end. The scene itself makes sense: Lilligold had pointed out to Luster that Luster doesn't particularly like being a locksmith, and perhaps through her shows of magic and artistry, inspired Luster's course of action. However, Luster's choice is quite a big, life chancing decision, and there is relatively little buildup to that decision, so it carries little emotional weight with the reader. Plus, given that the prior scene emphasizes how Luster values her parents, it's odd that the next scene shows her leaving them. Other than the chain of cause and effect that led to Luster's decision, I don't really see an overarching message or idea that connected the epilogue to the rest of the story. The shift from Lilligold's perspective to Luster's perspective only served to highlight this disconnect. The epilogue certainly creates a nice character arc for Luster Lock (perhaps more interesting than Lilligold's character arc throughout the story), but that character development is so compressed in the final parts of the story that it feels like some ideas tacked onto the end of the story rather than an integral part of the narrative.
6240458
I have a lot to say on some of your points, but I think I'll wait until the round is over or closer to it. Mainly, I just hope most readers didn't get a couple of the ideas you seemed to, because they must have really hurt the experience. That plus I knew the whole thing wound up a lot more vague than I think most readers like, and that couldn't have made it any easier. Sorry.
6240740
Since my time with the Slamjam is coming to an end, do I get to know what your idea for me was?
6242450
Hey now. I thought your entry deserved more votes than it's getting, and that can still turn around. If it doesn't, I'll say what the idea was when the round's over.
So Monday's coming up fast, and vote counts have been posted a single time, incorrectly… Not that it matters hugely with only four pairings, but still.
6244421
Hell, I'll do it. If only for consistency's sake. Two closest pairs will be underlined.
Luster Lock vs. Lilligold: 5-5, Tied
Mango Leaf vs. Summer Heat: 9-2, Mango Leaf
Ace Artisan vs. Evergreen: 8-2, Evergreen
Firefly vs. Falcata: 4-1, Firefly
Firefly vs. Falcata definitely needs more votes—especially given how many people have abstained. I'll get around to voting on that one some time this weekend myself. As for the other pairs, it's really interesting seeing the back-and-forth on Luster Lock vs. Lilligold. Just as one of 'em pulls ahead, another vote comes along to tie it up. I'm glad that matchup is living up to everyone's expectations.
Well, that was an interesting round. No dropouts, at least--hope we can keep that up until the end.
Gonna go ahead and post a final vote count now that the deadline has passed. Here we go!
Luster Lock vs. Lilligold: 6-6, Tied
Mango Leaf vs. Summer Heat: 9-3, Mango Leaf
Ace Artisan vs. Evergreen: 10-2, Evergreen
Firefly vs. Falcata: 6-2, Firefly
Looks like we're due for another tiebreaker vote—again in a round where Luster competed. Can't wait to see how this pans out.
6254008
Someone who hasn't voted yet is gonna have to make the decision, or a new tiebreaker method needs to be invented. As the organizer for this contest, Obs knows every author's identity, so any vote he casts is invariably going to have some level of bias to it. I mean no offense to his good judgement in saying that, of course.
6255628 I trust in Obs ability to judge fairly.
6255810 I don't doubt that Obs can judge fairly, but he's still human (despite what some may believe). Hopefully someone else will step up and vote before he feels pressured to do so himself.
Holy shit I'm so sorry. My life got interesting all at once and I... well.
But congratulations to everyone, all the same! And I'll stick with an abstention on Lili vs Luster, now that I'm late.
6255887 it doesn't work that way.
6255628
You realize that this isn't the first tiebreaker, and that Obs was the one to come in and break it last time, yeah?
6256344 Yes, I remember that, and I had my reservations about it after the fact. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that it isn't ideal.
6256168 You mean the 'he's still human' part? What I mean is that it's inevitable that the fact that he knows who the authors are will affect his vote, if only by a small amount. The anonymity rule wouldn't need to exist if we all could judge the stories by themselves and leave their authors out of the picture, and Obs is no different from us in that regard, even if he's not participating as a contestant.
Like I said, it isn't wrong, but there are better ways of resolving ties.
Edit: To be fair, I can definitely imagine people are hesitant to cast the swing vote, because they're nervous about having that kind of power in their hands. If Obs is the only one willing to break up the tie, then so be it. Better than letting this round drag on indefinitely. That is, assuming 6256161 doesn't change his mind about abstaining.