Tuesday, October 24, 2006

[GTT6] Round 1B Commentary

As for the first wave of first round goodness, here's a rundown of the other three brackets.

Pooh Bracket
Kanga Bracket
Tigger Bracket

And now, thoughts, in reverse order.

Tigger - There really aren't too many surprises here. GBJ advanced with a wicked RP... read it!, and I still think he's the bracket favorite. Still though, despite the inherent absurdity of the character, Plucky the Cockfighting Duck turned my head at least with his hilarious RP which contained a pretty memorable line:

"Holy frijoles, that duck knows lucha libre!"

Honestly, I want to hate Plucky, but I can't because the writing is so deliciously over-the-top. Also notable in this bracket is the advancement of Bryan Storms, who is the only FW/A1 character who won their first round match. Congrats to Shinder for being able to pull off what myself, Jeff P., Jason and Dan weren't.

Kanga - One HUGE upset here and another milder one. The Earth-shaking upset was Hoyt Williams losing to Joshua Kosidlo. I know I didn't have Hoyt on my shortlist, but I expected him to notch at least two wins under his Bible belt before losing out. The next one might have been expected from some people, but when a short-lister goes down, a short-lister who happens to hold the Global Championship in his last PTC event, well, it still turns heads. Kimbusa won the Global Championship from Seymour Almasy and knocked him out of GTT6 in the first round. Talk about one last Chocobo ride into the sunset gone awry. There weren't any other real huge surprises in this bracket though, but Almasy and Hoyt going down... man.

Pooh - First off, let me say that I'm not angry that I lost, not even in the short term like I was last year. I brought it, and it wasn't good enough to advance. Simple as that. Maybe next year, I'll be able to get in and get past the first round. Still sitting on a PTC goose egg, GTT and IG combined. *sigh*

Anyway, onto more objective discussion...

Two of the judges' comments rubbed me wrong here. One, Judge #3 in the Payne/Dash matchup... I understand the criticism. Although I personally enjoyed Jason's RP and thought it to be an amusing take on the proceedings, I know that the "unoriginality" of the piece could bring it down. The way the comment was presented though... I know it might not have seemed to have come off badly, or maybe it wasn't even intended to be posted as such, but it still was. While I don't begrudge the judges their right to their opinions, and while I certainly don't begrudge their right to be straightfoward and not to pull any punches, this, I think, goes too far. I don't want the judges to walk on eggshells with what they post, but I think they should know not to hand in inflammatory things for Ross to post.

(For the record, I did discuss this with the judge in question. I'm not going to say who it was - a good journalist never reveals his sources - but he understands the nature of how it could have been construed wrong as well. It was an honest mistake, and there are no hard feelings towards anyone, believe you me.)

The other judge in question was Judge #2 of the YYJ/Sirrajin match. I was pretty miffed when I saw the comments initially and thought they were also glib and uncalled for. After rereading them, I think that the opinions and criticisms offered within were valid points of view. However, this line sticks out to me:

"The big problem is, while the parodied storyline has been done, this would seem to be a storyline we'd expect from someone else and it wouldn't be as lacking in the ability to keep my interest."

Umm, what's this supposed to mean? I know most of the guys from PTC, unless they've been in NFW, have never been in contact with YYJ before, but how could this be something you'd expect from someone else and not Jeff P., who's done YYJ off and on for the last four or five years? He did post a bio page, for crying out loud. I feel you have a right to favor any RP over another RP, and you certainly have the right to think that Sirrajin won the match. Darryl is a solid writer in his own right, and I hope no one thinks that I'm taking anything away from his win.

I just like to see some better reasoning behind the judgings. If you can't put your feelings into words very well, then be short and somewhat vague with your critiques. Simple as that.

Other than that, the PRIME-killer, Digital Mortality, was finally killed by a PRIME-ate as Karina Wolfenden took him out. That stands out to me as the other notable result in this bracket. Nova also posted a quality RP, with more to come. I did pick him to win this bracket, mind you, so hopefully, I didn't jinx him too badly.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

dude, i understand the comments were messed up. but losing to super scary secret agent gimmicks isn't the end of the world. not every tournement is the dupree cup.

"I think what it shows, is that the judges knew thier PTC counterparts writing style, and as thus, were leaned towards rather than those who were written by someone outside of PTC."

i used to feel for you. now i think you're stretching.

Anonymous said...

This is a reply to Jason Payne, who I hope comes back to read this, because I don't know where else to get in touch with him.

I realize this might not be the place, but I want to respond to this, and I apologize to the guy who I only know as J_A, who I think does great things with his blog.

As for Jason Payne, the only thing that is a joke is your blog. 90% of the statements you make are completely without merit, and the only ones that have merit, are twisted.

Claiming bias is a serious allegation, and one that I don't think you've spent any time looking into.

First of all, you're right, the Pooh bracket had an unordinary amount of free agent losses. But you fail to mention that there were 2 FA no-shows in that round, and you lost in a very close match, by a count of 2-1. Yeah... that reeks of bias.

"This was not limited to Pooh bracket though. If you look through all of the GTT brackets, there was an overwhelming majority of matches that saw PTC based members go over Free Agents"

Nice researching job. Here are the actual numbers.

Leaving out FA vs FA matches...

Eyeore - 2-0
Kanga - 2-1
Piglet - 3-1
Pooh - 0-6
Rabbit - 2-1
Tigger - 1-3

For a grand total of...

10-12, with several FA losses due to no-show. Get your facts straight.

"Apparentally if you want to advance in GTT, you have to write a 10 page novel that makes no sense and doesn’t connect to anything that has to do with your character."

You're allowed to say this. PTC has evolved in a direction that few circles have, where we value writing more than wrestling.

You can think that's wrong.

You can say that sucks.

But you CAN'T EXPECT US TO CHANGE WHAT WE VALUE JUST BECAUSE YOU HAPPEN TO ENTER ONE OF OUR TOURNAMENTS.

Get over yourself.

This wasn't bias. 99% of the people entering this tournament knows the kind of work that PTC values and knows what's going to get them through to the next round. Just because you're not cut out for PTC or PTC's not cut out for you, don't go crying about imaginary biases. We play the game a little differently and EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT. If you don't like it, no hard feelings.

But DON'T throw accusations of bias around.

The next time you start making allegations you might want to actually look into them first to make sure there's a single thing that's valid.

TH said...

Before the claws come out in full force, I'd ask you to keep the discourse civil here. Thanks in advance :)

Anyway, as for Jason's comments on his own blog, he's told me (and I hope that's the case) that it was just a case of blowing off some steam after a tough loss. Nothing more, nothing less. It's natural to feel like that after seeing a flippant comment like that.

I think another thing to realize about Jason's blog is that there's a lot of in-character stuff on there. I know he goes back and forth between IC and OOC, but hopefully, this was an IC comment.

I also hope that Jason's not soured on the PTC experience just because of this match. If the style's not suited towards him, that's fine, but I feel that just by going on one judge's comments (which he didn't even mean come across the way they did) in one match to judge an entire community isn't the best thing to do. Trust me, they aren't out to screw outsiders. They want more and more people to be a part of their community so that it can grow.

Besides, I think that we, people in the FW and A1 communities, need to be a part of PTC to remind them of the old school and that it's still alive and kicking.

Alright, done :) But please, play nice. I don't want to have to delete comments because you guys let your emotions get the better of you.

Anonymous said...

Can I add also as someone who has nothing to do with this tournament and should clearly mind my own business? :-)

Heh.

Look guys, you can't join a cross-promotional tourney and then get upset when they run it the way they normally run things. They aren't trying to get you in their world so you can change it. They're more interested in showing your world in the hopes that you'll enjoy it and maybe try it out.

It's just like when people complained about judging in the TEAM stuff. I mean come on, you know everyone is different. The simple thing is, we all have our different criteria and everyone is free to either participate or not.

This is why I don't participate in PTC stuff or why I've never done fWo despite numerous calls by friends in the hobby to do so. I know I don't enjoy that style, so why would I do it? So I can write something, lose and then get upset about it? It's pointless.

This is akin to going to England and getting ticked because they won't call an elevator an elevator instead of a lift. 'It's an ELEVATOR!!!'.

Be nice.

Anonymous said...

that should have said "more interested in showing you THEIR world"...typos suck

Anonymous said...

If a guy can't blow off steam on his own blog, where else can he do it?

R.

Anonymous said...

Hate to leave a comment through here again, but Jason Payne's comment thing isn't working, which is why I left the comment here in the first place. Several others tried to leave a comment on his blog as well. I tried to get his e-mail but it's not on the blog either. This was a last resort, because I saw his post here.

So I'll try to keep it short.

Two points.

1. The only thing anyone took exception to was when you said the judges were biased against non-PTC participants, and yes, that makes me angry because three people took the time out of their day to read your work.

Everything else is fair game, and most people, including myself, agreed with you that the judge was out of line.

2. There's no way that was IC. I've never seen anyone talking about writing an RP IC, or about judges IC. If you were angry, fine. There was way too much talk about writing in there for it to be IC, and even if it was, the people you were insulting with accusations of bias were OOC.

Again, I don't like leaving comments here, but I don't know where else. Which is why I left my e-mail last time instead of a page.

Anonymous said...

okay, now you're retroactively calling your complaints "opinions"?

like PTC being biased against free agents. that's your "opinion" and it's your right to have it?

i don't think you're "allowed" to do that. eye roll.