Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Last Gladiator Standing Unplugged

The challenge has been cast. The gauntlet thrown down. Many have been called, few have answered. On the planet Hacknor... On Fire Island D, twelve brave contestants will compete. Who will falter? Who will thrive? Who will be


Welcome to Last Gladiator Standing unplugged. I wanted to share with the audience a little behind the scenes look at the show. This is by no means a clip show cheaply and hastily put together to try to get one more week's worth of high ratings. A lot of thought and detail went into this hastily put together show to get one more week's worth of high ratings.

I'll start with a quick rundown of the challenges. I want to let you people know where some of these ideas came from as well as a few that didn't quite make it.

1. Fight The Robot. I wanted to start the whole thing off with a bang and do something physical. I really couldn't make all the challenges about fighting, but I thought this one worked. Obviously, I came up with the idea of the robot mirroring your own abilities to give a challenge to the meta powered and "regular" contestants alike. The shutdown sensors were another parameter set up to give a definite conclusion to the match other than someone trashing the hel out of one.

2. Race Across Hacknor. JawaJuice had a similar challenge for Survivor Tatooine. This is a bit of a rip off, but it's also another physical challenge that all of the contestants could compete in. I made a serious attempt to create a map for it, but that fell through fairly quickly, hence the scratchy piece of garbage that you ended up with. I thought it worked out pretty well and it was the only challenge where I actually had to determine a 1st place.


3. Eating Contest with Starky. The genesis of this challenge hails from the show Fear Factor. They're always eating disgusting food and I had a character from my blog established who cooked awful food.

4. Sidekicks. Another thing that established on my blog is the obnoxious sidekick. If I had to have a grating, unfunny number two, it's only fair that everyone else did as well.


5. Make Fluke Laugh. My original idea for this was to entertain a bunch of kids, which has been used on other reality shows (notably Last Comic Standing). When Fluke agreed to guest host, it quickly devolved into make him laugh.


6. Tour Guide. Another challenge that I saw on last Comic Standing. I liked the idea of entertaining a busload of rubes.




7. Confront Your Mirror Counterpart. One of my story arcs in my blog was Jon's battle with his evil universe twin. It's a well-worn science fiction convention and I thought everyone had really good takes on it. Although my intent was to have people meet in the room, everyone basically took off into his or her evil counterpart's universe. With hilarious results!





8. Call A Match. Not sure where this came from. Basically it was a setup for the next challenge.





9. Clean up The Arena. Pro wrestling's origins are in circus tents and smoky halls. Wrestlers often had to set up their own rings and clean up after. This is that idea taken to the next, disgusting, level.




10. Gender Reversal. You can credit Simon with this one. I had a few ideas, but this one really struck me as a great challenge. Of course, the change had to be temporary, but it also had a lot of potential to go a bunch of different directions.




11. Thunderdome Of Bad Gimmicks. I had to incorporate real-life wrestlers into this one. There are so many bad gimmicks that have been used over the years, I barely scratched the surface. Hard to find photos for some of them, though.




12. Challenge Grab Bag. I wanted to make the final one a bigger challenge than previous. Making it a grab bag like this forced the contestants to come up with their own idea and run with it.




Now some that didn't quite make it:

Entertain the kids. Became make Fluke Laugh.

Build a Battlebot. I thought this would be a good idea, but it was also a little close to fighting the robot. Additionally, where would contestants go with it? "I built a robot. It has a flame thrower." doesn't have as much entertainment value as the challenges that were used, I think.

Battlebot Tournament. This would have been the follow up to building a battlebot. The logistics of figuring out who would win and how someone could get immunity were a little too much.

Bananaphone! My thought was to have the ghost of Jo Jo the Monkeyboy lock everyone in a room and have the song "Bananaphone" playing over and over again. I scrapped that plan because I didn't actually want to read a bunch of posts about the song.

Treasure Hunt. This was a good idea, but it was also similar to the race. I probably could have used it, but obviously I didn't. Maybe Last Gladiator Standing II.

That's it for the challenges. Other thoughts are that I am honestly surprised over the final vote, but having Erifia and Henchman, two of the newer blogs out there, battle it out at the end was great. I am not sure what the deal was with having to boot some of the contestants early. That got annoying as did having to constantly hound a couple people to get them to post. I understand that real life gets in the way and I felt kind of stupid asking people where their posts to my goofy contest were, but there you go. Morpheus remains a mystery to me as the writer seemed to really want to participate but then completely disappeared after one post. Legolas’ non-judging was obnoxious as well, but as it quickly became a non factor, I don’t care to comment on it any further.

On my part, I don't think that I explained the concept as well as I could have at the beginning. I kind of thought people would pick it up quickly because this was already done with Survivor Tatooine and Big Brother Naboo. In any case, once everyone got into the swing it went smooth as Velveeta on a silk stocking.

So saddle up everyone, you're invited to throw in your own two cents. What worked for you? What didn't you like? Have a drink at the LGS Bar while you're at it, Hudson's buying.


So Long

I regret not being able to compete in this game for as long as others did, but I'm happy that everyone had fun doing this...


The couple of lame posts I did do, I had fun doing. Brilliant idea for a game show/blog on Jon's part, so props to him.
I love the idea of doing another one, and look forward to that.


Not much else to say from me but congratulations to everyone who competed. You all did a marvelous job, and it's amazing that we have such creative writers and individuals here with us.
You're all winners; no one loses, and so on and so forth...


On that note, I leave you with:
Goodbye may seem forever,
Farwell is like the end,
But in my heart's the memories,
And there, we'll always be.
*cheesy*


Cheers, Erifia.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Last Gladiator Standing: and the winner is...

The challenge has been cast. The gauntlet thrown down. Many have been called, few have answered. On the planet Hacknor... On Fire Island D, twelve brave contestants will compete.
Two remain, but there can be only one.
Who will falter? Who will thrive? Who will be




This is it folks. The votes are all in and we have ourselves a winner.

And we'll let you know who it is right after these messages.





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We're back. Let's get right to the winner. The last two contestants are Local Henchman and Erifia Apoc. I think that we can all agree that everyone's a little surprised that these two made it to this level, but we're all very proud of them.

Let's take a closer look at them shall we? Here's the wild Jedi herself:


I smiled at it, and it threw its saber at me. I grabbed it with my own control of the force and tossed the saber far into the air, and when it threw the second one, I knew it was toast, because I threw it away again. "You seem like a good droid, I hate to kill you." With a midsection slice, and a thrust with my upper saber, the droid exploded into tiny bits.



"I don't know you, I'm afraid," I said.

"I am The Magnificant Becca. I have chosen you."

"No, it doesn't work like that, I pick you."

"No, I'm afraid I have chosen you. You should really start listening to everything that gets said."

"So, what's your catch phrase."

"I don't know."

"You're supposed to have one."

"Right, 'I don't know.'"

"No, see you are supposed to know, you have to have a catch phrase or I fail."

"Right, 'I don't know.'"



Decapodians, filthy nasty creatures. There are remains of food, and solient green, and force knows what else. Like there was a full buffet tossed over, and they were still eating... I rubbed my chin... Maybe this could be easier than I thought...

"Hey," I said to their leader, "I have a deal for you... I will give you and your people fifty bags of wookie hair, fleas and ticks, if you eat everything around you, and make it sparkle."


Erifia Apoc everybody, give her a hand. We'll show you Henchy next. Right after these messages.


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We're back. Let's show you a little something about our Local Henchman. He may be a nobody in a nameless, faceless legion, but he's number one in our hearts:


Ladies and Gents,

The Hover bike race was about to start and I had 2 problems; The map looked like a kid threw up on a paper towel and the bike that Jon provided stunk.

HHhmmm....I called up The Hacknor Home Shopping Network and they delivered this:

Sweet, isn't it.

Hudson asked how I could afford it, I handed back his credit card. (He was still putting money on it) and said "thanks".



432: Right, as we see Ignignokt and Err or in the ring. Stewie is running down the ram.

M.G.: Oh my god. He's taking them both on, Stewie is a house on fire.

432: Look at him go. I've heard Stewie was an expert at 2 on 1, but thought that ment something different.

M.G.: This type of action is only on Hacknor World Wrestling.


Hacknor World Wresting get the gladiator out.


432: Oh no the numbers game has caught up to Stewie.

M.G.: They are giving Stewie a savage beating.

432: Wait a minute, wait a minute...here comes Brian.Here comes Brian.



M.G.: Oh no, this is unbelievable. Brian is just standing there.

432: I never thought this would happen. Wait...wait. Oh no Brian hits Stewie.Brian hits Stewie.

M.G.: what a betrayal.

432: This is the greatest crime in the history of mankind.

M.G. I concur.Wait what's this...Stewie is up. Stewie is up...

432: Wow, this guy is amazing. He really giving it to Brian.



Bane pumps up the Venom "This is a new mix, to make me even stronger."

" I don't care."

Lighting cracks the sky.

We storm towards each other.

Bane tries to get a grip, I twist his wrist to the outside. I follow with a clothesline.

I let him get up.

"Very good. You know how to fight." He say as he pumps more venom into his system.

He grows.

It doesn't help.

I hit Bane with everything; Punches, kicks, open hand, closed fists, elbows,knees and the ground.

As I clutch his neck. I beat his face to a purple mess. To hell with Jon's rules. I am going to kill him.


How about that? The Local Henchman, everyone. We'll let you know who the winner is right after this important commercial message. Hey don't blame me, I'm just satirizing all the other reality shows!


Coming soon to a telemonitor near you.

One's a living, sentient starship...
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The other's a wacky monkeyboy!

Together, they're Sargon and Mojo. Traveling the spaceways together!

"Mojo, you got banana sauce in my environmental control register again."

"Did I do that?"

"Oh brother, not again!"

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"What's this for?"

"Wait, Mojo don't---"

"Ooops!"

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"Mojo, you my bestest fwend, too."

(Awww)

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OK everybody, we're back. I know this is the moment that we've all been waiting for.


Henchy, Erifia, this is it.


The moment, the magic, the time to let you know who the winner is.


And we'll let you know right after these messages -- I'm just kidding!


The winner of the competition and a signed copy of Tales of the Unexpected is


None other than....



The person I am naming below...


Who is...


...Before I tell you who the winner is, I just wanted to take a moment to thank Simon for agreeing to be a judge for the whole contest.


Simon was created when I asked one of the character bloggers to be a judge. He (or she) didn't want to participate in the game itself because she (or he) didn't think that he (or she) had enough time for it. So Simon was created to be a full-time judge which, ironically, was probably more work than being a contestant would have been.

As a token of thanks, I would like to also send a signed copy of the book to Simon.

Thanks Simon, you snarky priss.


And so, without further ado.



The winner of Last Gladiator Standing is...


The person below...

Whose name is...



Erifia Apoc you are the Last Gladiator Standing. Congratulations.

You win the book, a free supply of Hovercycle Wax, and dinner for you and Private Hudson at the Hacknor Season's Hotel.