r/whowouldwin • u/LetterSequence • Mar 04 '22
Event Character Scramble 15 Semifinals: I'm Still Here
This round is now closed for voting! Please vote for the write ups in the form linked here. Voting will close at 10PM on April 12th.
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This round is for matches 37 and 38 on the bracket. Make sure to double check to see if you’re in this one!
Your journey is reaching its end. The location of Kingdom Hearts may be nearly impossible to reach on foot, by land, or by sky. Except there is one way to get there. After all this time traveling, all the information you’ve acquired, all the things you’ve seen, you know the secret. It all involves a door.
“When the door is open, so too will Kingdom Hearts open.”
There’s one door that is spoken of. A door used by a dreaded space captain. This captain stole treasures from all across the universe, and kept them to himself, never to be seen again. This door is a portal that opens to his treasure, and it can also open up to anywhere in the entire universe. It can open the way to Kingdom Hearts.
And that door is located on…
Treasure Planet
So you know where to go. But how do you exactly open this door?
Luckily for you, one brave adventurer holds a map, a spaceship, and the key to this door, and is looking for a crew to help escort them across the cosmos to reach the planet unharmed. That’s when the ideas start to formulate.
Escort or Heist?
Will your team present themselves to this adventurer and offer them aid? In exchange for directions, a split prize, and a companion, this would involve ensuring their safety, providing passage across all of Treasure Planet, fighting off any who would stand in your path, putting your life in harm's way all the while.
Or… will your team simply wait for someone else to take up the offer? If they follow this path, they can stalk the team who joins them instead. By prowling in wait, they can ambush the other team at the vital moment they reach the treasure, and take it all for themselves. However, you’d need to obtain your own means of travel, as losing sight of them means losing the treasure in its entirety.
Space, Land, or Underground?
Traversing an entire planet aimlessly is a good way to get yourselves killed. You’ll need to pick a route that’s safest to get there with the least danger possible.
Do you approach from outer space? Going from above may seem like the route with the least danger, but it comes with plenty of downsides. One wrong move, a stray asteroid, an attack that leaves you stranded from the ship, can leave you floating in the deep reaches of space until you finally perish.
Do you approach from land? It’s the most straightforward and easiest to circumnavigate, but this planet is covered in deep jungles and vegetation, with very little wildlife. Resources may be difficult to manage, the path would be the longest, and an ambush is almost all but guaranteed.
Do you approach from the underground? Beneath the surface is an entire system of passageways, tunnels, and heavy machinery, as if the planet was built by some insane person. It’d get you to the door the fastest if you know where you’re going, but if you don’t… you may be lost under here forever.
The Door
At the pivotal moment when the door is open, what will your team do? It can offer them guidance, lead them anywhere in the universe, and lead them exactly to Kingdom Hearts. But the promise of unlimited riches stands in front of them as well. It is here that what is most important to them will be tested.
All of this being said… this is the final leg of your quest before finally obtaining all you desire. So… what will you do?
Scramble Rules
That’s Sora, Donald, and Goofy Too!: Every participant this season received three characters on their team, but many of them might not be a household name. To aid with readability, please give a brief summary of your characters, with enough information so the average reader can get excited for your team before starting.
Let Your Heart Be Your Guiding Key: Your write up will depict a scenario where your team is the victor. Even if your team has a one in a million chance of overcoming the odds, show what they’d need to do to come out on top against the challenge in front of them!
Unlocking Limit Form: Writers are allowed to make changes to their characters in their narrative to fit their story, such as allowing power stealers to gain more powers, teaching martial artists new techniques, or having characters gradually grow in strength between rounds. However, you are not beholden to following what your opponent is doing. When facing another team, you are only required to write their characters as they were submitted. This is to help with ease of research, and make things more fun for both sides.
Round Rules
Guest Starring…: Space Adventurers! The guest in this round is someone who has a vested interest in Treasure Planet. Are they the person who holds the key, who needs to be escorted to the door? Are they the leader of the band of misfits who intend on stealing your treasure for themselves, or the group that escorts the client to the door? Are they a lone wanderer, stuck on this planet, who once resided on the crew of the captain who stole all the treasure? However they show up is up to you!
Setting: Treasure Planet, a mysterious and deadly planet said to hold all the treasures in the world at its core. The solar system surrounding it, deep in the cosmos, bathes this world in purple hues, the lights from hundreds of millions of stars. The planet itself is teeming with vegetation. Thick jungles, moss, mildew, and yet curiously, no life at all. Only the remnants of an adventure long since finished. Underneath the surface, this planet functions as a machine. Deep tunnels that lead to secret passageways, lights that illuminate this world, and cogs turning for some reason or another. There are plenty of paths that all lead to the same place. The door that leads to everywhere, and most importantly, to your goal.
Key Points: The key points of this round are as follows. You must obtain the key to open the door that leads into your ultimate goal (Kingdom Hearts). How you obtain this key, reach the door, and what roles the enemy team and guest fill are up to you.
Post Limit: For this round, writers will be limited to 10 posts, or 100k characters. While it is fine to go a little bit over, anything that far surpasses this limit will be automatically disqualified. This limit does not include intro posts, or analysis of the matchup. Use your best judgment, if you think your story is too long for the round, it probably is.
Due Date: Write ups will be due at 10PM EST on April 8th. That’s a full month, so you should have plenty of time!
Flavor Suggestions
The Door is Open: Your team is heading for the door that resides somewhere on this planet. This door is essentially a portal that can lead to anywhere in the entire universe. While you ultimately have a destination in mind, does such a prospect tempt anyone on your team? How would they react to such an easy method of transportation? Would they try to keep it for themselves? Visit any places before settling on Kingdom Hearts?
Fool’s Gold: The core of Treasure Planet is roughly one hundred million billion metric tons of gold, jewelry, and riches stolen from various cultures and civilizations. Maybe your team is only in it for the money. So, is there something that’d tempt them even more than this? Some kind of goal that’d make them seek out Kingdom Hearts instead of ending their journey here and just nabbing as much gold as they can get their hands on? Or maybe, they’ll get greedy, and try to do both? Remember, it all depends on what your team would do!
3
u/OddDirective Apr 09 '22
The mountain of muscle looks up to the sky, an' before I know it, he's launching himself up to come back down on top of us.
"Scatter!" Gwen calls out, an' there's no need to tell me twice. I take the straight way forward, but I look back an' see that Lancelot didn't scatter so far. He must have some kind of death wish.
Lancelot ducks the fist Hale tried to put through his head, and swings into him- and of all the things that coulda happened, it bounces off. "Ha!" laughed Hale. "This is the wall you will not break down. This is self-indulgence on a whole new level."
Animal Man swoops in, slaps him across the face, and that lets Lancelot get back. But against a guy like this, there is no safe distance. Hale promptly proves my point by reaching up and nearly grabbing Animal Man out of the sky.
I have to get in there.
"This is the sin of the writer," Hale rumbles, "who only wants to make impressive things happen. Who sees one character or another and wants to elevate them above all the rest. This self-indulgence turns the rules into paper-thin suggestions, and breaks open the doors to the absurd. Indulging destroys the realistic world."
"Do you even hear yourself?" I say, crashing bodily into the bodybuilder. Absurd is right when it comes to this guy's strength, but anybody my size and my weight runs into something that ain't tied down, it's going flying. Hale staggers three steps forward.
Gwen pulls out a pair of pistols, and fires wildly at Hale to pull his focus. It does, because he starts punching the bullets down into the ground. "He's like a bear! He's like a big shaved bear that hates people!"
"And there is the other side of self-indulgence," Hale says, before wheeling around and cleaning my clock out of nowhere. "No matter if it fits, no matter if it is to something completely removed from the tone, the references jam themselves in wherever they can. Writing simply to regurgitate the things which have already been done, in the hopes anyone else will recognize it. And in doing so, you turn away those who don't get it. No one can 'get' everything. Putting in those self-indulgent moments doesn't add a thing."
"You're wrong," I say, still a bit punch drunk. Hale looks to add more, but Lancelot slashes him in the side, keeping him off me for a few.
Animal Man picks up where I left off, both in the striking department and the speaking one. "Over all this time, I've seen and remembered so many things. Including the Red, including comic book limbo- those can't have been mistakes. And I won't let you say that they don't matter!"
Hale shakes off the hit, and swings his whole arm at Lancelot, forcing him to duck. "They can't matter that much," he says.
I run in and grab him around the torso, keep him from goin' anywhere. Lancelot replies. "You must give yourself more credit. You brought about my meeting with so many knights that so few would know. That cannot just be self-indulgence, for it shows a commitment to your work."
"And you had me talk about the beer I drank," I add. "An' I thought about Izzy right before. You wouldn't know about either of those if you were just lookin' from the outside in."
Hale flexes, an' my hold on him breaks. He boots Lancelot away, an' turns back around to me. "What does that matter, anyway?"
I put up my dukes. "It means you care enough to get the little things right."
That hits harder than any punch I coulda thrown, but I add in a cross to the body just to make it sting that little bit more. Buddy flies in and stings him in the back again, too.
Hale stomps, and that shockwave knocks me back a foot just by itself. "Then how about the DenLiner, and the Admiral Zheng He? The Shadows in the Andes and the Reaper girl slashing the canvas? Only one person could understand all of those, and it's me!"
"That may be so," Buddy responds, "but there's another side to it you haven't talked about. Sure, if you don't get a reference, things get confusing. But when you see something you do get, when you recognize what a writer is going for, it makes everything around it better!"
Hale pulls back his fist, and I see the string connecting it to the ceiling. I can see all the strings, now. That means- he's losing his grip on him. "We're getting there, keep goin'!" I shout.
All of a sudden, he looks up at the sky. Does he see them too?
…It turns out it ain't that. Hale crouches down, pushes off, an' just the wind of it nearly blows me over. But he's up in the shadows on the ceiling now, and when he comes down, you don't want to be under him. So we spread out.
And after a few more seconds, we get impact. A tidal wave of coins and jewels ripples out from the crater he just made, which washes over every one of us but can't carry me away. That leaves me a front-row seat to the ground breaking up and throwing chunks of rock into the air big enough for an elephant to stand on. Hale looked between each for a second, and then took off, using 'em as platforms to hit whoever and whatever was still in the air.
Then he went right back to standin' there, his fist still smoking from the hits. "This is the indulgence of battleboarders. Those who value feats over all else. It is a curse."
"Bull $#@!" said Gwen, popping out from behind a boulder. "You want to know what that was? That was the coolest thing anyone's done yet in this whole story."
Off in the distance, Lancelot hits the ground. I figure he will be back up in a minute, but I've got to get the here and now. So I step out.
"You gotta give the people what they want," I say to him. "And things like that jump, things like takin' an entire machine gun blast to the chest, like beatin' down a whole horde of soldiers? That's the stuff that they all eat up. Because everyone knows how strong you've gotta be to do it!"
Hale dropped to a knee. He was on the ropes. And with both of our friends getting back up, it's time to end things.
Gwen starts the ball rolling. "Okay, so let's get things straight. Including references to small details, references to outside media, and characters doing cool things beyond their normal limits is self-indulgent, according to you."
Hale nodded, and stood back up with his head turned towards her.
Buddy picks up what she's saying. "If that's really the case, then what's wrong with doing it in a story like this?"
"It destroys things from the inside. It alienates the audience-"
"There isn't a reader in the world that doesn't want to see things breaking apart and smashing into each other at some point." Gwen countered.
I step into the fight, and land a hit square onto Hale's chest. "An' if they see what they like, whether it's somebody strong or somethin' they know, they're gonna come back for more!"
Hale staggered back.
I swing again, and Gwen brings the truth. "And the truth is, you're not nearly the first one to make something thus full of references. The battle of Helm's Deep is just one extended way of Tolkien saying 'Shakespeare couldn't handle it'!"
Hale blocked with a forearm, and the string on it went slack for a second.
Animal Man stood up, and added his two cents. "There's a line of authors stretching back centuries, all living and creating what they wanted without a care in the world, and they succeeded! So how is it any different from now?"
"I don't- know!" Hale said.
"It ain't!" I conclude, winding my fist back. "That's why we're telling you all this- so you can let it go, snap out of it, and write what everybody wants to see!"
I wind back and hit him clean in the jaw, and the strings shatter to pieces as he flies through the air. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the Stitcher recoiling like he got hit, too. I smile.
Somehow after all that, Hale gets up in no time flat. He walks over, and tips his hat. "Fine work saving me from that, it was awful havin' to listen to him speak those words with my voice. Now, erm, how are we supposed to do the same with the others?"
"We're using what we know to counter the doubts the Stitcher is made of," Buddy says, "so if you can talk any sort of sense about what they say into them, that's good."
"Ah, and if I can't?"
"Well, when all else fails, sometimes you just have to hit it hard," I say.
Hale hits his fist against his palm. "Now that's what I wanted to hear."
“Alright, fine!”, the Stitcher shouts. “In that case, I’m gonna go all out!”
Threads sprout from the Stitcher’s back, and lift him up like the legs of a monster. He pulls some more white threads into his hand, and then chucks them all at us. “Die!”