Semifinal Match Schedule for Blogger Blitz: Black Sheep

Good morning, fight fans, and welcome to the first week off of Blogger Blitz: Black Sheep! Our competitors – and even more so our judges – have been going hard for four weeks as battle after battle took place in round one of the competition. This week, we won’t have any match posts or results posts, giving the judges a much needed rest while the competitors and their villains prepare their submissions for the semifinals. For you, fans, today is an opportunity to learn what our competitors already know: the events they’ll be competing in for the semifinal round!

Now if you’ve stumbled upon this for the first time and don’t know what the Blogger Blitz is or how the heck we got to semifinals, let’s break it down. Blogger Blitz: Black Sheep is a single-elimination competitive blogging tournament. Eight bloggers chose their favorite nasty villain to sponsor in the competition, and were randomly paired against each other by a blind draw. The events they competed in were created by taking suggestions from various bloggers earlier in the year and then jumbling the ideas together into one prompt. Those, too, were randomly selected by blind draw. For four weeks, matches were held one at a time with each blogger in the event submitting their competition posts on Monday of each week. Our three judges then went hard at work reading, researching, and deliberating each article to determine a winner. On Friday each week, I compiled the judge’s thoughts and presented them in a results post to announce the winner. Now, the time has come to do it all again for the semifinals.

Much of the work is already done. The events were designed in the same manner, submitted by bloggers a few months ago and then jumbled together and voted upon by the community. Those events were drawn randomly from a hat (actually, it was more like a bucket) so no competitor had any idea what they would be dealing with during the semifinal round. But who are these bloggers who managed to make it this far? If you’ve missed any part of the Blogger Blitz: Black Sheep, the rest of this post could potentially contain spoilers for you. So to avoid that little problem, here’s one last chance to experience the competition yourself before I just start throwing around match results like they’re public knowledge.

In the following list of events, there will be a number of links. Click the villain name to be linked to the article submitted for the match, where you can also follow the sponsor’s blog. Click the sponsor’s handle to go to their Twitter, where you should most certainly follow them if you haven’t already. Finally, click the event name to read the results post that announced the winner of the match.

1. The first match took place between Marjolaine (@TheAmbiGamer) and Bowser (@LightningEllen) in a charged social showdown called Totalitarian Teatime
2. The second match pitted Xehanort (@overthinkery1) against Thel Vadam (@xGamersUnitedx) in the deadly Great Baddie Bake Off
3. The third match saw Sigma (@flameflash) take on Ganondorf (@sheikahplate) in the blogger blitz within the Blogger Blitz, Blogger Blitzception
4. Finally, the fourth match was Frank Fontaine (@gitgudatlife) versus Charles Jericho (@AlexSigsworth) in the Villain Con parking garage during Parking Panic

Now that you’ve had a chance to read it all, let’s stop talking about the past and look forward to what’s next. It’s time to talk semifinals for the Blogger Blitz: Black Sheep competition!

MOVIE MARAUDERS
Competitors: Marjolaine (@TheAmbiGamer) and Ganondorf (@sheikahplate)
Designers: Imtiaz (@powerbombattack) and Athena (@TheAmbiGamer)
Match Date: September 3rd, 2018
Results Date: September 7th, 2018
Word Limit: 1500 words

It’s Friday and work this week has been pretty hectic – another upstart hero tried to stop your tyrannical rise to power, the royal heir escaped your wicked clutches, and cosmetic microtransactions were just announced for your favorite video game franchise. Luckily, you’ve got a relaxing weekend planned with your buddies, a movie night complete with snacks, decorations, and total surround sound. At least, that was the plan.

Just as movie night is about to get started, your villain realizes discovers that a pack of wererats broke into the cupboard and ruined all the snacks! Now you have to figure out where to quickly obtain more snack food before your friends arrive. Panicking, you look out the window of your beachside castle and see a faint ray of hope: a beach party taking place right outside! All you have to do is steal all their party stuff and bring it to your own party and the night is saved.

Bloggers have a lot of creative freedom with this event. Who’s throwing the beach party? How will the villain approach the party to steal the goods? Will the wererats just let this slide? With so many options available, there’s no telling what will happen in this kooky Blogger Blitz event!

Competitors will have just over a week to complete their submissions (having been informed the details of the event on Friday), as these posts are going up one week from today: Monday, September 3rd, 2018. I’ll then post the results on Friday, September 7th, 2018.

BREAKING THE BROKER
Competitors: Xehanort (@overthinkery1) and Frank Fontaine (@gitgudatlife)
Designers: Athena (@TheAmbiGamer) and Chris (@overthinkery1)
Match Date: September 10th, 2018
Results Date: September 14th, 2018
Word Limit: 1500 words

In the vastness of the universe, there exists a being known as the Shadow Broker. A powerful and mysterious alien creature, the Broker deals in secret knowledge and bears secrets too powerful for the mortal world. Among the many things the Broker knows, the most coveted secret of all is the knowledge of affordable real estate. Who among us has never thought, “I wish a scary alien would help ME find a modest home in a safe neighborhood!”? It is this very thought that spurns the villains to action in this semifinal event.

In this event, your sponsored villain is nearing the end of their lease and is ready to move into the frightening world of home ownership. But in this economy, it’s impossible to find an evil lair that’s both fully equipped for repelling pesky heroes and easy on the budget. The only being in the universe who could possibly know of something so rare is the Shadow Broker.

Your mission is to pursue the Broker and extract information from him about how you can find your first home. Any means are acceptable, but know that this guy is no slouch – besides being an alien with superhuman strength, he’s well-resourced with a ton of heavily-armed mercenaries hanging out with him on his large and complex space vessel. And if he knows what you’re coming for, he may just make the information that much harder to find…

The competitors in this match have a bit more time to work with, as this event will take place on September 10th, 2018, and the results will be posted here on Adventure Rules on September 14th, 2018.

WORDS OF WISDOM
The semifinals are a very important time in the competition, as they are crucial in defining the championship match. During the first Blogger Blitz, these matches were very close, providing some of the most divisive judging in the whole competition, even more so than the championship itself. Because either of these matches could come down to the smallest of details, here are some lessons we can learn from the opening volley of the competition!

FOLLOW THE EVENT PROMPT! If there was one theme that recurred throughout the first round, it was this. The judges felt that during many of the events, the event text wasn’t followed to the letter and it made some of the rounds more difficult. While for the most part these deviations were not intentional on the part of the bloggers, it goes to show that paying attention to what is being asked in each prompt is an important factor to address. So make sure you read the event descriptions thoroughly and stick to them!

BE TRUE TO YOURSELF! Each of the villains in this competition brings something unique to the table. The articles that stood out the most to the judges during the first round were those which emphasized the special qualities of the villains. Think about what makes your sponsored character quirky, powerful, clever, or cool, and consider how you can incorporate it into your submission. Those qualities are the ones that set apart two otherwise equal submissions!

EMBRACE VILLAINY! What sets Blogger Blitz: Black Sheep apart from the previous competition is its focus on bad guys, and if there’s one thing our judges love to see, it’s hideous evil on display. Evil takes many forms and everyone does it a little differently, but however it comes into play it leaves a positive impression on the judiciary. Why have a competition about villains if there’s no backstabbing, betrayal, senseless violence, kidnapping, or other applications of malicious intent? So get in touch with your inner antagonist and let’s see some truly despicable deeds out there!

REMEMBER TO HAVE FUN! The semifinals are here and that means things might feel a little more serious. The matches will be tighter, the judging more meticulous, the posts lengthier, and the stakes higher than ever. But this most important piece of advice from round one still applies to this leg of the competition. Blogger Blitz is ultimately a big, goofy crossover. Sure, it’s the semifinals, but when it boils right down to it our villains are searching for real estate or throwing a movie night for their buddies. So remember to keep it light and have a good time, because the ultimate goal of the Blogger Blitz is for all of us game bloggers to have an amazing time together!

That’s all for today, fight fans! If you’re bummed that there’s no match this week because you still want to ride the Blogger Blitz hype train, come check out Adventure Rules on Twitter where I’ll be sharing last year’s semifinals posts along with some behind-the-scenes stories. You should also use Twitter to send some encouragement to our hard-working competitors as they work on their submissions, and to say thanks to the judges Kim, Destiny, and Pix for all the amazing work they have put into this competition. Those ladies deserve all the appreciation in the world, so be sure to give them a shoutout! Thanks for reading, fight fans, and remember to keep your eyes on Athena and Teri Mae next Monday for the beginning of the semifinal round!