Mech Fite, Suprise Fite, SK's Fite, and Fite Confessionals

Well, getting lazy on blog posts has caused me to come to this point where I have a lot to cover, so here we go!

First, the confessions. I am an avid writer and poet outside of Zoofights, winning 3rd place in some big sci-fi short story contest I entered, and writing poetry that infected my old High School literary magazines like a plague. I may post some of the old stuff here one day, but for now this is all fite business. Anyway, I was an avid writer, writing things for silly fun (I have a deviantart full of ridiculous movie scripts) or for serious story telling, but one thing I was always skeptical about was fighting in writing.  I could write pretty good stories, but I always thought that writing an interesting fight was just something I couldn't do. I used to marvel at how J.R.R. Tolkein could do it (But not J.K. Rowling. I have a beef with her miles long, and I actually liked the Harry Potter series a lot! But that's a rant for another day...) So, even though I was antsy and very involved in getting the FYM topic started, I didn't even know if my writing would turn out ok! I was going in pretty much blind. I think I adapted pretty well to that though :D

Another confession: Snappers were introduced solely for the Pre-Fite show of the Big Bar Brawl and later adopted to be JRM's always watching eyes. It allowed me to not have to have him float in and be the umpteenth person to ask "Why is this person that? Or who is this person? Why is this like so?" Cleans up the bar a bit if every character doesn't have to ask about a new development the user slept through. Also, it does allow me to have any event on standby if it needs to be seen again and so JRM can actually mediate people well if he feels like it. He is detached from the bar but still cares about them enough not to want them to die outside of his arena. He also is big on hating hypocrisy and is all about the ad hominem argument, but those two ideals often clash :P

Last confession is not related to fites. I recently tried to do a King of Beasts ABC thing with character commentaries on each letter's person, but I ended up doing a train-of-thought style of typing, and I realized that I came off as a huge dick that way! I ranted about things like informed cuteness, so now I just have that blog sealed in a vault for a day when I feel like being seen as a massive jerk. I might just post the ABCs independent of the commentary one day.

Now then: Mech Fite!

Mech Fite was originally going to be one long post in an attempt to subvert the two post format that I seem to have made standard lately. I thought a concise fite would be a nice change of pace, but then things got delayed and I wanted to get some of it out quickly for the readers and it ended up being split. Then, I decided to do something I don't like doing much and doing a straight up "winner is already decided" cliffhanger. Deleter did it in Drown Yer' Mates but usually I avoid doing any between post breaks so... teasing I guess is what I'm thinking of. If it was the Big Bar Brawl people might have been into the cliffhanger, but this was a regular fite, so I don't think I did anything more than prolong the conclusion a bit.

On other matters, I wanted to point out the fact that Bug was sentient and WML wasn't, giving him a unique advantage. That's where Rebecca pulling Celestia out of her mech came from. I had no intent of hurting either opponent, although Rebecca was eventually hurt. It happened more because as I wrote it Rebecca just couldn't stay on Bug, and the picture I drew was supposed to be of her fallen off and looking up at Bug as he is destroyed. I feel bad Bug had to die that way, partly because I had a bit planned in Race Yer' Mates where the others face an obstacle that he'd just walk over like a boss, but now he is a bike like the rest of many of them, so that got scrapped. I probably need to start writing RYM today if I want M Sheep to comment on it >_> I keep stalling!

Oh, another confession. I used to write fites almost exactly around the time the fite was supposed to start. I'd write the post and post it and get started on the next. That's how the tag-team battle went, so the pacing wasn't deliberate, it was me trying to write as fast as I can! I also sometimes delay posting a bit to prevent typos or discontinuities. Remember the two ROBs in the Rafflesia fite? That WAS an error at first, but when I read it I was like, "I NEED TO CORRECT THAT!!! Wait... I haven't talked about the Sheep in a while... MWA HA HA HA!!!" So the Sheep became a shapeshifter too.

Mech Fite, I think, was subject to a voting falacy a lot of fites face these days: Development Error. It's what I call it when even though the characters should be evenly matched or one fiter is superior, the voting goes towards the person who is the character we want to see die less, rather than who we think would win. It's not a problem usually, but I think Rebecca's smaller presence dissuaded people from voting from possible "Sarah crying about mommy losing" events. I think we also face some other fallacies: If Jonesy enters a fite, Erebus pretty much is forced to vote for her because his character is married to her. If Sarah enters a fite, Alex would have to vote for her. At least multiple characters can allow people to support things differently. These are tiny things, not gamebreaking fallacies, so I'm cool with the way things are now.

But yeah, Rebecca seemed like the one more likely to resort to practical tactics (removing Celestia from the mech) and Celestia seemed like she'd be more focused on avoiding unnecessary violence. So that is a thing that influenced fite events.

Now let's move on to the guest write, Lightwing vs Kirby. I was a little sad to see the Gezora pic as the only image, but since it was a friendship victory, I didn't rage about no KO shot. So in other words: The fact that SK chose to include a Friendship victory (which no one voted for, but he probably included a random element in the tractor like I always do for WTF endings) and avoided my disgruntled glare of "Why no KO pic?" I think it was excellently written though, and even though JRM did his usual grumpy commenting, I actually enjoyed the fite. I like reading my characters in fites, and I would like to toss JRM himself into a fite again one day.

I think I need to retire Lightwing though. ROB brought up a good point: It's hard to follow events, so having a character appear from seemingly nowhere for a fite can dissuade voting. Deleter talked of writing out Optimus, so she'll go with him. For now though, I like having her there to be nice to Kirby and act as a person who is always in the bar to talk if its needed. Harry is gone because his boyfriend died, JRM is sometimes doing things, and Fumes is a homeless man (until now! I'll write about the homeless people's new homes soon in the bar topic). I'm not sure about the Attorcroppe colony and what to do with them. I like them, but they don't do much. I thought we needed waiters and assistant janitors so we don't use up five posts complaining about ineffective janitors, so they may just become background characters if people accept them.

A confession, but related to Kirby vs Lightwing: Lightwing's heartwarming talk with Kirby was my way of manipulating people into voting for her! Okay, not so much manipulation, but I knew Kirby had the cute factor on his side, and Draco paid for fiting a cute person. People don't like seeing cute things die, no matter how outmatched a person might be (not saying that was the case in either of these instances, but the Pet Fite hell yeah it was, and we all know it! Silver is a badass now at least out of it. Nago... is disturbing. Just consider you moving from your body after death into a doll shaped like you... That's probably just me though, I bet everyone else is fine with it!). So yeah... I was talking about Lightwing! She had to seem like she wouldn't ruthlessly murder Kirby because she wouldn't! Her personality is a lot like a Warrior version of Sarah, but Lightwing has some demons. She constantly regrets killing Q while possessed and can't ignore that her possession was a big part of her life. I try not to be overbearing with the sadness over killing Q because it could devolve into annoying angst.

Friendship was a good conclusion, but I think SK will be the last Guest Write for the year, since we'll probably only be here for two or three more weeks. Call me crazy, but I have the odd feeling the final to Zoofights may be delayed!!! Heck, the smaller fights were, what is going to stop the grand finale from doing so too?

Lastly, I'll discuss the Surprise Fite. I will probably write a post later about all my characters that encompasses the recent epic finale that had them all crawl out of the woodwork for action, but Yahoo Bot's action there is worth mentioning. I had already planned for Adbot Fite #2 to take place almost three months after the last, the pictures were drawn and everything, but then the epicness happened and I saw room for Yahoo Bot to get in, which started the waterfall of character inclusion. Yahoo Bot is becoming a bit of a badass now himself. Maybe ROB and Yahoo Bot need to fite? That might be a great Fite Finale for the year!! Besides, according to the Rocky analogy we've applied, it is time for ROB to fite his "Rocky Balboa" fite. I may have to talk to Godbot about this >:3

Anyway, Bing Bot was a bit hard to find a good model for. I went to google and typed Bing Robot! XD I think I did at least, Bing Bot was sitting in "the future!" folder for a looooong time. I finally found a reason to use him this week: The inevitable delay of Race Yer' Mates. I had also worked on the image of all the images being shot out of the search engines a while back, typing "fight" into Yahoo and Bing and seeing what images they gave me. I think I also might have looked up words like tussle or brawl for variation, but I think I got a pretty good mess of images. I also got to make snarky comment about Kathy Griffin! She can be funny, but usually she is just very annoying... The OMG! video I found was the epitome of that, and it fit with what I wanted Yahoo Bot to do in that situation so well! I also wanted to bring in aspects of both search engines, which explains the MSN butterfly. Sadly, I brought him in as a spur of the moment thing, so I had to kill the butterfly without a death image. Google+ died that way too I believe. I also wanted to include Hotmail, and some unexplored facets of Yahoo Bot, so the chest buttons were used more to its advantage this time, and unfortunately, I couldn't find much Yahoo has besides OMG! that I implemented. I briefly had the MSN butterfly die by getting caught in a Yahoo Game from its game section, but it was too odd to implement.

Image time!

Recognize this pic? I drew it for Cornwind's big thing. In the crowd I drew (from left to write) Front Row: A pile of Tribbles, Alex the Janitor, Rain, Father Squid, Nago, Midori and Fumes. Back Row: Optimus Prime, Celestia, Gamera.

I wanted to do a crowd shot, maybe of Shuma ramming through the bar itself, but this just worked better. I can't wait for the crowd shot of next year's Big Bar Brawl. It will be so well occupied!

Ok, I'm done for now. See ya later ya'll!