Welcome to the results of our third and final Redemption Duel.
Technically there are three competitors here: Our longest resident, bloodsword, of the Dudecore tribe, was eliminated in Round 2, fair-and-square won the first duel and then won the second by default; NimrodKirkpatrick, of the Hermaphrodeity tribe, was eliminated in Round 4 after not submitting a story; and AllanFisher, originally of the Hermaphrodeity tribe, was eliminated from the Dudecore tribe in Round 4.
NimrodKirkpatrick, however, has opted to take himself out of the game completely, which means this is another two-person duel.
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Formerly Known As Team 5
One will be eliminated completely. One will return to the game and join the merged tribe for Round 5, where they will have the opportunity to win SmackDown: MadMike's Revenge.
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Without further ado, here are the judgements:
Judgement by MadMikeMarsbergen
1. Prompt Adherence - 5/5
Vivid imagery, clearly depicting the selected pictures. Rodney was used spectacularly, as was the musical prompt.
2. Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation - 3/5
"Captain," when used before a person's name or in place of their name, should be capitalized, as it's a title—twelve instances of this that I counted (the exception would be something like "the captain"). I caught three missing hyphens.
Which brings me to an interesting conflict: What to do when the two stories are vastly different in terms of length? If you write a longer story, you run the risk of making more mistakes. And a shorter story can have comparatively more errors within its smaller length.
So I got my girlfriend to do me some math. The only way I could see to do this was to get an estimate of roughly how many errors bloodsword would have if his story were the same length as his opponent's (2470 words).
15 errors ÷ 5510 words = 0.00272 errors per word
0.00272 errors per word * 2470 words = 6.72 errors
3. Story Enjoyability - 5/5
Initially I worried this might be too hard-sci-fi for me, but then Rodney the music-listening AI entered the picture and gave me some good laughs. Also, Rodney gets to be tall in this story, which is rather nice for a guy with a Napoleon complex. The story reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama at times, which is pretty cool. It was an exciting take on the Lost World SF sub-genre.
Total score - 13/15
Judgement by MadMikeMarsbergen
1. Prompt Adherence - 4/5
Neat descriptions, and Cochran was great. I was disappointed in the picture prompts, as they didn't really describe the images selected. The use of the music prompt was amusing and played a major part.
2. Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation - 2/5
Some errors I noticed—
"Hells bells" should be "Hell's bells."
There were misplaced possessive apostrophes, as in "Johns' assistant" or "Johns' ears." Three of these errors I found.
"Ten thousand watt smile" should be "ten-thousand-watt smile."
"People just seem to gravitate to him" should be "people just seemed to gravitate to him," to stay true to the tense.
When directly addressing someone, a comma should be used before or after the name (depending on context)—for example, "Good afternoon Branch" should be "Good afternoon, Branch"; same with "You gotta be more careful Cochran." Six of these errors I found.
"A major break through" should be "a major breakthrough."
Missing hyphens, as in "gold colored metal." Two of these errors I found.
If using double quotes (") for dialogue, in-dialogue quotes should be single quotes (').
3. Story Enjoyability - 5/5
Would pay to read again about Cochran's surprise regarding Branch's limited grasp of string theory. Funny story, some interesting twists and turns with the quantum toaster (I mean, doorknob), Atlantis, hollow Earth, etc. And the ending was gold.
Total score - 11/15
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And you know what? Fuck it. I'm realizing how potentially unfair my incredibly lax Redemption Duel word counts can be. Let this be a lesson to you future SmackDown hosts: If you're judging based on the number of errors, and then do some weird, zany shit like this, put a cap on the word counts and keep the minimum and maximum relatively close so as to not make much of a difference.
Fuck it, I say. AllanFisher and bloodsword, you're both moving on to the merge. Round 5 was just gonna have one person eliminated, but now it'll be a double-elimination round. Now that's what I call a twist.
For now, all I can say is: Rejoin your opponents and await the start of Round 5.
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SmackDown: MadMike's Revenge!
Science FictionLeft beaten, bloodied and bruised in a ditch somewhere, @MadMikeMarsbergen lost the Pot 1 Finals of SmackDown: The Second Coming to @torontojim (who later ended up winning the Grand Finals, too). Now he's back to get some revenge on all you competit...
