Tapogre Fite

Well, that fite is over now. Time to talk about it a bit.

Our fiters:

Foreman Tramadol:
He probably has the most interesting background. Back when I first started planning the Tapogre Fite, Foreman Tramadol didn't exist as a character. Tramadol was just a spambot, and as such I didn't have to incorporate anything besides the pill he is based on. Back then, he was literally going to be a giant pill of Tramadol with a Tapogre trunk, but when the ideas became more serious for the Tapogres, he became a tapogre with skin made of the drug. This carried over to the Foreman, but was never used for anything more than his appearance. None of the Tapogres except Yquem could really have exploited the dissolving aspect of the pill, and Yquem is too nice. Saberwulf decided to go and establish Tramadol as a character, which definitely got him a lot of support. Too bad he had to die... I made sure his death was sad though! I will miss the character definitely... May he rest in peace knowing he has changed the way some of us view Tapogres.

Doghouse:
Another classic Tapogre, he also was just going to be an object with a Tapogre trunk place on it, but of course that evolved. Had he lasted longer the tapdogre within the house would have probably been more intimidating. Had he got last place, he might have even ended up a puppy! He was given an early death though, so at least he got a kill in before he was killed. Shame the two classic spammers died, one so early on.

Luling:
Luling actually surprised me a bit. I was going home from University one weekend to visit the family and saw a sign that said the next exit was for a town called Luling! I wonder if the spammer took his name from there specifically. One good thing about the spammer itself was that it posted multiple topics to draw upon for the Tapogre's appearance. A lot of the accessories were laid out in the spam threads, and the weapon was easy to pick because of it hocking Runescape gold. Runescape ain't 80s, but I tried to keep the Tapogres connected with their spamming counterparts.

Spatagots:
A porn tapogre, one pushing russian preteens no less! Luckily, I just shifted that into a Russian preteen with a briefcase that probably contained porn, but just ended up holding nitroglycerin. Yeah, it was an asspull, but I wanted to see Mr. Twister explode! Spatagots got a lot of support though because of her weapon choice, which made me pretty happy. I don't like it much when people vote who they don't want to see die rather than who they know will win. Fites between undeveloped characters lend themselves to more honest voting. If Tramadol hadn't been developed, he might not have received any votes! Anyways, since Spatagots was russian, I gave her an AK-47, mainly because otherwise she was a non-contender. Didn't realize how much a simple gun would change her chances of winning! Too bad she lost anyway!

Xrumer:
Our winner, ladies and gentlemen! RedSpy's little bit really helped me write his victory. I knew he'd phish most of the battle, and I originally intended for the sock puppets he wore on his hands to act as his mouth, with his real self never talking, but he only talked once and it was too badass to waste time explaining. Xrumer was created by reading the wikipedia page and integrating the actual spammer's methods into a physical form, while also making him pretty mysterious. That's why he has a cool hat!

Imarliage:
RedSpy was instrumental here again. Back in the topic the spammer made, Spy wrote a whole spiel about Wholesale Goldcoins being the best Zoofighter ever. Calling the Tapogre Wholesale Goldcoins just felt wrong though, and Imarliage just seemed a lot better name anyway. Sound neat and interesting! Makes me think of mage or sage. So the gun, arms, and golden armor came from Spy, but the rapper aspect came from how he was banned. Gravitas posted some rapper dancing as the ban image, so I incorporated that. I did that for a lot of the other Tapogres coming up too. I wanted to write more Tapogre raps for this guy, but I ended up distracted during the writing, so I only got one good rap out. I actually feel like singing the rap and recording it myself...

Taiple:
He had to be a russian stereotype. We had so many russian tapogres that we needed a representative of them, so he got the job. He was originally just going to be a Tapogre made of jumbled code, but that proved too hard to draw, so I mixed his Russian and code aspects, making a Tapogre who blended two types of Tapogre into one competitor: The Russian spammer and the Gibberish Spammer.

Seo:
The topic was banned faster than I could take notes, but I got two things: Google and Seo. Looking up Seo on Google (ha ha ha) I came up with some Asian man named Seo Taiji who seemed to be quite the fashionable fellow. So I used him as the main focus, and then added parts salvaged from Googlebot to make him more interesting. Since the ban image involved an asteroid hitting earth that was a frogface, he turned into a tapogre essence who used Seo and googlebot to survive.

The Trojan:
Since the mod stuffed this guy in a wooden horse, I decided to give him a little wooden steed. I also took the fact he was talking about the Trojan virus and went and turned it into a nerd LARPing as a Trojan. He was just one big joke, but it was kind of fun drawing him the first time. Not much too say about him, some Tapogres just had to die.

Yquem:
Pronounced "ii-quee-em" I imagine. The ban image was of a chubby kid, so I made him a kid. The guy also only posted a simple agreement for his spam, so I made him pretty pacifistic. That was too boring though by itself, so I looked up his name in google and it seized on Yqeum, which is apparently a wine company in France. So I decided to make him a sad mix of wining objects and an agreeable kid who couldn't say no to it. He was doomed to die too, but he was a helpful puppet for Xrumer and a perfect candidate for the Tapogre Power image.

Accountant Frog:
The ban image was of a man with a frog face with an afro and suit, and the spammer talked about accounting, so that became this odd thing. Accountant frog was originally going to draw up business with Imarliage as his accountant, but Spatagots would kill him because Imarliage was busy, but I just rearranged that a bit and hopefully it didn't come off to odd. I liked the idea of the job DELUSION so I wrote around it.

Anna:
Anna is a weird case. It posted a topic promising porn of Anna Nicole Smith, but it just has a little thing of it saying hi and being nice. I turned its misunderstanding of how to properly spam into how it made it body a weird unholy thing. People in the spammer's topic talked about Batman, and I was going to give Anna a fear of Batman, but it wasn't very applicable in the fite's setting. Maybe if we had someone RPing as Batman Anna could have seen him in the crowd and flipped out on a murderous rampage or something, but nope!

So that is the Tapogre Fite. Tonight will be the pet fite, where people are bound to complain no matter how gentle I am with the pets. Unless the Tribble just pet the cats and ponies and they all pick flowers I doubt I will get positive feedback :(

Oh well, I'm supposed to be impartial! I need to think of how the Major would handle this!

Okay... Maybe a toned down version of how he would have animals fite a bunch of furballs...