March 2, 2008 - Sunday Teams Announced; Name Them. And Such. Okay, we now have our final field of 18, which seemed like a good enough number. There will be three teams of six this time around, with the lowest-scoring team each week voting out a member. Oh, and please be cautioned that a surprising number of players haven't yet subscribed to the blog, and one (Robin Zimmer) hasn't even added the blog as a friend...and appears to have rejected us when we offered the hand of friendship in her direction. She filled out the 15-question thing, but apparently doesn't know we have our own site...? Maybe...? Anyway, teammates of hers: it's your problem now, homies. Like last year when the four teams were asked to make titles for themselves based on the four directions, this year the three teams will incorporate the primary colors in their team names. Talk amongst yourselves to decide a team name, and when any member of your team sends us a message with a team name, that'll be it. Cool? Alright then. For your convenience, I have the teams now split on our top friends list: the red team, followed by me, then the yellow team, followed by Ryan, then the blues. Note that only five reds are present, since that's Robin's team. Okay, so that should be all the minutiae I have to deal with. Let's show you freaks your teams, as decided by my trusty dice rolls: RED TEAM Kim Brake Cory Funk Jason Harber Josh Mitchell Marisa (I'm going to need a last name for you, if that's alright) Robin Zimmer YELLOW TEAM Patrick Kozicky Carrie Metz Blair Ross Zach Samuel Perry Thrun Brienne Zimmer BLUE TEAM Leif Bierly Sarah Bizek Rachel Dwyer Samantha Fronek Oliver Thrun John Youker Look good? If not, blame the dice, beeotch. First challenge coming in, like, twenty minutes. March 2, 2008 - Sunday Challenge One I swore this year that I wouldn't do the hyper-annoying thing where I'm well into a post, then accidentally hit a button that makes me lose it. Guess how f*&^ing long it took me this year? Challenge One, Take Two: Well, hello! This is Kelly Allen Wells, creator of this Survivor thing which probably at this point deserves to have a different name 'cause it's not altogether similar to the show. Sorta. Anyway, I ran the first two games myself, and after Ryan Fossum (again, with the middle name of Allen) won the second, he pitched the idea to run a third game together, and it was a helluva fun time. But there was no real break between the second and third game, which meant Ryan and I were involved with it for, like, thirty straight weeks. Now that the burnout has left us, and you apparently like (or don't hate) us enough to play, our fourth game now begins. Here's the setup: challenge is announced on Sunday. You all have until Friday afternoon to finish it, at which point Ryan and I score it and announce which team scored lowest and therefore has to vote out a member. You then have until Sunday to choose who to vote for, and on the next Sunday, we'll announce who was eliminated, then promptly give you the next challenge. Oh, and like last year, weiners who fail to do their challenge will not only hurt their team but will, for the voting period, self-cast three votes and therefore probably be eliminated themselves. So there's your warning, you. The game is starting with two returning challenges this year, but both allow for a lot of freedom and creativity, so they'll probably continue to return for as long as I do this game. Like at least once before, the first challenge of Survivor IV is Fiction 59. Fiction 59 really is the perfect challenge...it involves almost zero work on my and Ryan's part, is fairly simple to complete on your part (depending on how awesome you are), and allows you all to see who the dead weight on your team is. Isn't that great? Most of you know this by now, but Fiction 59 works like this: you have to write a complete story that has exactly 59 words. Things that can help you are to have a clear idea of character and place and to have a clear plot, but the only real scoring criteria we'll give you this time around is provided by my friend Netflix: 5--Loved it 4--Really liked it 3--Liked it 2--Didn't like it 1--Hated it No pressure, but neither of us have ever given a score of "1." As far as this challenge goes, we don't care if it's comedy or drama you go for. If you touch/tickle us in some way, you've done your job. But wait, there's more: players who fail to send us a story will get a score of negative one point, and people who plagiarize their stories will receive negative five and an assload of unironic abuse on my part. Yes, I know how to search for plagiarism, and yes, I've caught someone before. Ryan and I will score each person and average their score, and then each team's average score will be calculated. The team with the lowest average score per person will then be asked to escort one of their players the f*&^ out of the game. Tiebreakers will be decided this way: first, if any team has a plagiarist, they lose. Next tiebreaker: team with more non-players loses. After that, the team with the most scores of 5 is immune. And then four, and so on. If we need any tiebreakers past that point, may gosh have mercy on our souls. Ready? Well, we are, so we don't much care if you are or not. You have until Friday at 2:30pm central to send your challenge as a message to our site; please make the title of the message "challenge one." We'll see you on Friday to tell you who the real competitors are. Cheers, primary color-teams. Welcome to the best use of MySpace in history. March 7, 2008 - Friday Challenge One Results Okay. Apparently, you guys aren't interested in making this easy for us. That is to say that all eighteen of you sent in stories, and therefore there's no easy voting for the losing team. Let's see who won the Greg sweepstakes too, shall we?..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> As always, you guys were pretty good in this challenge. I foresee lots of fun throughout this thing. 1 William Harvey stole the cookie from the cookie jar. So on the afternoon that Myra Higgins convulsed to her diabetic death on the ironically cheery preschool room floor, all fingers pointed to him. With chocolatey lips, William gestured the alphabet and lisped, "'C' is foe cookie. That'th good enough foe me." William was later eaten by a manatee. Scene. Ryan: 4 – was going great, but cop out on the ending and use of last word. Would have been a 5 if it was played out. Kelly: Drama! Intrigue! Suspense! Well, actually, comedy. And it's well-written comedy, too. The nonsensical ending is a funny visual, if a little tacked on. I laughed. It's good for four points. By Sarah Bizek (Pablo's Blue Period); average: 4 2 To be fair, I never thought it would go so far. One day someone took an interest in my talent and I was ready. In one murderous act, I found my profession, but within those to follow, I lost my life and, finally, my place in "civilization." Money doesn't buy clemency and now death comes to me in prison. Ryan: 4 – very good. I liked the simplicity, yet for some reason it says everything it needs to. Good show. Kelly: This is definitely among the darker ones the game has had over the years. Without even naming the character, we get the entire picture of their life in a neat little package. Me extremely likey. It's worth five. By Rachel Dwyer (Pablo's Blue Period); average: 4.5 3 One day Phil decided to open the portal in his basement and wreck havoc over Baltimore. He flipped the switch and the device hummed. The hole in the center opened to: Cleveland. "Now, let the evil that is Cleveland flow! HA HA!" Nothing happened. "Oh well, maybe tomorrow." Phil said, and he went back upstairs to nap it off. Ryan: 3 – Clever ending, but I needed more about what was going to happen to Cleveland, a steamer perhaps? Kelly: Despite the fact that it should be "wreak" and not "wreck," this is a damned fine little bit of comedy. It's seemingly inspired by "Pinky and the Brain," and if you've been around the game long enough, you can probably guess that John Youker did this. I'll give it four. By John Youker (Pablo's Blue Period); average: 3.5 4 The mystical oval rolled towards the frightened children. "Do not fear," he said through a slit they assumed was his mouth. "I come to learn." "Learn?" asked one child. "Yes, learn the ways of the shapeless." The children cried. "They are leaking," thought the oval, "another defective race," and the children ruined the earth's chances for peace once again.