Mike the Foxhog and Felix Yusupov
The next block of appeals opens with Mike the Foxhog, who acknowledges the scattered applause as he enters the appeal area, his meowth Felix Yusupov tagging along at his feet. With an encouraging nod from his trainer, Felix bounds to the center of the stage, tail twitching eagerly as he watches the judges.
The judges signal for him to begin, and Felix instantly turns on the charm; he begins cutely cleaning a paw, rubbing it against his cheek between bouts of licking, and starting up a deep, throaty purr that just
screams “Come shower me with love!” to every human in the vicinity. Some cooing and expressions of “aww” come from the spectators, and Felix looks up from his paw-cleaning to stare around at the sparse audience with wide, innocent kitten-eyes, his purring growing even deeper - every bit of feline body language giving each individual watching him the impression that he would love nothing more right now than to jump into their laps and nuzzle up with them.
Confident that he now
owns his audience, Felix holds his head up, the golden charm on his forehead glimmering brightly. The judges and spectators catch a brief glimpse of the charm seeming to bulge out slightly - but then, their vision is suddenly obscured by a blinding flash of white light! Several people cry out in surprise; as they blink the obscuring afterimages out of their eyes, however, Felix comes back into view, looking up as a shower of small circular objects, sparkling with reflected light, fall from the air and rain down around him. The spectacle lasts for a second before the last of the objects falls with a
plink to the ground, and Felix is left sitting in the center of a circle of scattered coins. The audience applauds appreciatively; Felix purrs happily as he acknowledges their praise, before walking over to Mike the Foxhog and jumping into his trainer’s arms, allowing himself to be carried off as contest workers enter the stage to clear away the coins for the next appeal.
Chiropter: 7.5
The display of cuteness at the beginning was… well, cute, and the sparkly Pay Day was pretty and species-appropriate. The appeal seemed divided into these two parts, though, with neither one having much to do with the other. Still, a fairly solid attempt.
Metalica Fanboy: 6.7
I found the appeal a tad too simple, but nonetheless good in that it sort of emphatizes Felix as a Meowth.
Kratos Aurion: 6.5
Ooh, cute and sparkly. But... what exactly did the two parts of the appeal have to do with one another? Individually they were nice, but after all that effort to look (ahem) charming, Felix just sort of sat there with sparkly coins falling around him. Appeals should generally flow smoothly from one maneuver to the next and follow a logical progression; it's more than just doing a bunch of individually interesting things in succession. Perhaps Felix could have made more effort to keep up the cuteness by batting at the coins as they fell or something. Still, it did look very nice.
Full Metal Cookies and Rasputin
Full Metal Cookies now enters the appeal area, accompanied by another feline - this time, a tiny shinx by the name of Rasputin. The audience watches Rasputin closely as he walks to the center and faces the judges (subconsciously, a lot of them are expecting another “cute” performance); Rasputin gives them a cute kitty-smile as the judges signal for him to begin…
…Then he bares his teeth in a ferocious snarl, letting miniature lightning bolts crackle and spark over his tiny fangs and drip from his teeth like saliva, illuminating his mouth and making his eyes briefly glow with reflected light, and lets out a tremendous, if slightly high-pitched, roar, the volume of which sends some of the shocked spectators falling backwards over their seats.
Not waiting for them to recover, Rasputin readies himself into a pouncing position, snarling and hissing at the audience. His fur starts to stand up as electricity builds in his body, making him appear a little larger and more intimidating (or maybe just silly, but very few in the audience would say that right now, given how ready to kill the shinx looks). Finally, Rasputin lets out an angry yowl and leaps into the air - his body explodes with light as he releases his stored electricity in mid-jump, sending sizzling bolts of lighting jumping erratically every which way, some spectators jumping back with a yelp as a few bolts strike unnervingly close to the front row. Rasputin lands softly on his feet, looks around at the patches of blackened, charred grass, and hisses dangerously once more, before bounding back to Full Metal Cookies’ side as the (somewhat freaked-out) audience applauds his appeal.
Chiropter: 8.5
Uh…nice kitty? Seriously, though, kudos on pulling off a fairly good “fearsome” appeal with a shinx - while it probably would have been more effective were Rasputin evolved, it definitely had shock value (ugh, I totally didn't notice that pun until I typed it down) on its side to make up for that somewhat. The attacks you chose weren’t overly creative, but they did play well to Rasputin’s strengths.
Metallica Fanboy: 6.9
I would probably bring up that Shinx don't look that scary, but they do have Intimidate, so, I'll play along. Overall, it was nice appeal, well jointed and built up nicely and all.
Kratos Aurion: 8.1
Ooh, cute and sparkly. Er, I mean, terrifying! Terrifying and sparkly?
In all seriousness, I think this went over pretty well. A bit short and simplistic for my tastes, but what was there was pulled off nicely and, for the most part, had the intended effect. This appeal would've been more appropriate if Rasputin had evolved, because shinx's "baww cute" is a little tricky to overcome, but I liked it.
Blazheirio889 and Eledancia
Once the burned patches have been covered over with new turf, blazheirio889 enters the contest stage, her gardevoir Eledancia at her side. As soon as the judges are ready, she walks serenely to the center of the stage, head bowed and hands clasped in front of her. She stands in that pose for a moment, her eyes closed, as the audience wonders what to expect - then, there is a collective
ooh as the gardevoir raises her arms and begins to dance.
Eyes still closed, Eledancia moves into a slow, graceful dance, stepping so lightly that she seems almost to float over the ground, her “skirt” trailing elegantly behind her. Circling and stepping daintily across the grass, she raises her arms beseechingly to the skies several times; her movements are solemn yet intense, and so entranced are the spectators by the gardevoir’s movements, that it takes them a while to notice the dark clouds billowing in above them, dimming out the sun as they fill the sky. Soon, a light drizzle begins falling, then becomes a light downpour - not terribly uncomfortable, but enough to make people wish they’d brought umbrellas.
Eledancia seems indifferent to the rain as she continues to move to her silent rhythm. The downpour only adds to the melancholy tone of her dance, turning everything gray and blurry… then suddenly, as she stretches an arm toward the audience, a large leaf, shimmering with an almost neon-like red, appears in her hand. She releases it and it remains floating, a blue psychic glow supporting it as it begins to slowly circle her body. She holds out her other hand, and another leaf appears, this one a luminous blue. One after another, she sets more magical leaves floating around her, until the dancing gardevoir is surrounded by a scintillating, rainbow-colored whirlwind of leaves and psychic energy, lighting her up behind the curtain of rain.
At around this point, Eledancia has danced herself back to the center. She comes to a stop, bowing her head and lowering her hands; as she does so, the blue aura around her vanishes, and the multi-colored leaves drift unsupported to the ground. As the rain begins to peter out, the gardevoir opens her eyes for the first time in the appeal, regarding the audience soberly before vanishing into a beam of red light as blazheirio889 recalls her.
Chiropter: 10
Beautifully done. This appeal really took advantage of Eledancia’s strengths as a gardevoir, and everything flowed together through the dance to make for a very atmospheric and graceful performance.
Metallica Fanboy: 7.0
I like how the appeal used three completely unrelated moves but still produced a properly jointed, well-themed result.
Kratos Aurion: 9.5
This was really quite beautiful and well-put together, and definitely spoke to gardevoir's strengths. The colors and movement were enchanting, and the effect of the leaves/energy shining through the rain was as well. Very well done.
Grass King and Cerberus
As soon as the rain clouds have dispersed completely, the final competitor of the block enters the stage: Grass King, accompanied by his arcanine, Cerberus. The great dog barks happily at his audience before crouching into a ready position, his big bushy tail wagging as he awaits the judges’ signal… and the
second it is given, the arcanine springs forward with such extreme velocity that he vanishes from sight, sending clods of turf flying from where he took off. The audience tries to get a bead on him, heads whipping back and forth, but can make out little more than a bright orange blur, flickering in and out of existence as Cerberus switches direction on a dime, zigzagging this way and that all around the arena. In fact, for a moment it is only the sudden lack of noise and air distortion that alerts the spectators when, without any warning, the arcanine actually
does disappear.
Confused muttering breaks out among the audience as they take in the suddenly empty field (now rather torn up by Cerberus’s claws), trying fruitlessly to figure out where the arcanine has gone. One person speculates that maybe he ran so fast that he broke the sound barrier, while another points out that were that the case, there would’ve been a sonic boo-
“RRRROOOOOOAAAAAR!”
The great, booming roar comes from behind the audience, and sends everyone flying from their seats in primal shock, knocking over the fold-out chairs in front of them. After a few have calmed down some, they look behind where the chairs were set up - and standing there, his fur ruffled from running and looking very pleased with himself, is Cerberus. He happily laps up the applause from the still-startled spectators, then trots back to the stage to join Grass King and await the final scores.
Chiropter: 10
Well,
that woke me up! Short and simple, yet exciting and perfectly executed. I loved the way this appeal played out, starting off all fast-paced and energetic and then transitioning unexpectedly halfway through into misleading and sneaky. Very nice work.
Metallica Fanboy: 7.2
Though I initially though using Teleport to exit the field would've been a tad unecessary, the, er, reffing made it clear enough that it did serve a purpose. What really made this appeal good, though, was the finish, and the way it was likely way more startling than any other attempt at being startling that I've seen so far in the contest (not that I paid much attention to appeals I'm not judging, but).
Kratos Aurion: 9.0
Pretty awesome appeal there. An impressive display of arcanine's speed, at the very least; I don't know if you were actually going for the "sonic boom" effect as described, but it definitely came across that way and I liked it a lot.
Once the spectators have mostly recovered from their collective heart attack, they direct their attention to the currently blank monitor above the judges' booth. The level of excitement has improved greatly from its mostly lukewarm status at the start of the block, and there is now a good amount of eager whispering and speculation throughout the small crowd as they wait to see who will get through... And after a few more tense seconds, the screen lights up and the final scores are revealed:
Blazheirio889: 26.5
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Grass King: 26.2
Full Metal Cookies: 23.5
Mike the Foxhog: 20.7
Congratulations to blazheirio889, who advances to the next round! Mike the Foxhog, Full Metal Cookies, and Grass King, thank you for some entertaining appeals, and good luck in future contests!
