The Contestants |
 Click to view original image source |
 Click to view original image source |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The Breakdown |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Advantages
|
Advantages
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Disadvantages
|
Disadvantages
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Kills
|
Kills
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
How we think the fight will go
Alvin woke up with a start, looking about at a world beyond his comprehension. He almost fell for it—almost thought himself in the Crystal City—but could see the falseness of this place, the un-truth. Oh, it shone with an ethereal beauty, an other-worldliness that could only be found in the heart of God…and yet the Unmaker could create, too, spinning illusions and falsehoods so real that they tasted like triumph, even though they were sown from seeds of bitterness.
Proof of this stood before him in the shape of a girl. She gazed at Alvin with strange eyes and a simple name: Molly. But she had other names as well, equally simple, yet equally the signal of a complex—and different—person. Almost as if she were a number of people in one, floating between fixed points without an anchor to hold onto.
No, this wasn’t the Crystal City.
It was Purgatory.
She held her hands out at her sides, nails growing to come to look like claws. It wasn’t hard to think she was a minion of the Beast, as pure an Unmaker as she was sullied by that very association. Alvin could feel the destruction in her, the blood of the poor creature Gollum on her hands.
He wanted to weep for her, but worried that tears would only hurt her more.
Tears…
“I cannot stop you from killing me, if you so wish,” he said to her. “I’m not a fighter by nature, although I have battled in my own way.”
“Then you shouldn’t be here,” she sneered. “Guys like you get chewed up and spit out like infected code. Just another reason for the name ‘hacker.’” She spat on the ground to emphasize her point.
“I’m sorry you feel such hatred towards me. I can’t give you what you want,” he said, “but I may be able to offer you a gift anyway.”
Her strange eyes narrowed, only to widen before she cried out. Her hands went to her face, and Molly fell over backwards, screaming.
“I realize it’s painful, but sometimes the truth can be,” he said sadly. “I hope you can understand.”
She got to her feet and looked at him in disbelief…
Two perfectly organic eyes where her enhancements had once been.
She was crying openly, struggling to comprehend what had just happened—what she was seeing.
And then she sprang forth and slashed open Alvin’s neck with her razor-nails, slicing back and forth again and again, reopening the wound even as he tried to heal himself.
Eventually she stopped, her tears falling freely onto the still body of Alvin. It wasn’t clear why he had stopped healing himself—whether it was a case of not being able to or not wanting to a mystery. Regardless, she stumbled away—not upset at the killing, but at the truth he had revealed to her—and left the body on the ground. She spat one last time, a reflex from a time now past.
And Alvin finally realized his dream of a Crystal City as he was embraced by the ultimate Maker.
Predicted Winner: Molly Millions
NOTE: THIS MATCH ENDS ON THURSDAY, MARCH 17TH, 2011, AT 5 PM, ET
Alvin Maker is a character from the Tales of Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card; Molly Millions is a character from the Sprawl trilogy by William Gibson.
Alvin Maker image courtesy of Dennis Nolan. Molly Millions image courtesy of *deadinsane.
What? Alvin just gives up? WTF? Is that the solution to every character who stands a good chance of winning actually losing? John Carter falling on his sword, Thomas Covenant not even trying, etc? What’s next? Is Pug going to win his round 2 match because Quick Ben decided he’d rather avoid such a fight?
Pug v. Quick is something I’m really looking forward to seeing the writeup for. Never read any of the Magician books but Quick is easily one of my favorites from the Malazan series. A lot of people would argue that Pug’s raw, godlike power wins the match by default but put him up against Quick Ben’s genius-level intellect and mastery of 12 warrens (and maybe a few Moranth munitions thrown in with Kalam hiding in the shadows) and it’s gonna be an interesting match-up.
I’m not at all familiar with either of these characters but the writeup does seem a bit contrived. Why give her her real eyes back win he could change her retractable razor blades into flowers and alter the air around her into some sort of solid block and then kill her at his leisure. Or be merciful and just leave her there. Granted I’m not really familiar with Alvin’s abilities but it seems to me that being able to alter any matter at will beats weird surgical enhancements 10 times out of 10.
Alvin Maker has got to take this. Though he is a good guy, and won’t just go wantonly killing, he has no qualms incapacitating his foes or defending himself. Example, Alvin fights guy in book with magical tattoo preventing him from harm. Alvin runs the ink on the tattoo and then proceeds to beat the guy to a bloody pulp in a wrestling match.
Given time to prepare, Alvin could fashion impenetrable, weightless armor for himself, completely transform the cyborg to a human instead of just her eyes, stay miles away and cause floods to envelope her etc. etc. The possibilities are pretty literally limited to your imagination.
Yeah, though I’ve tried not to comment on previous write-ups, I have to agree with the previous commentators: the premise of these cage-matches is that the people will fight each other. We’re comparing abilities, not disposition; we’re willing to suspend disbelief on motive for the sake of the exercise.
For all of the good-hearted pacifist contestants, can’t we just have some fiction where they believe that they have to win this tournament or, say, the universe will implode? I have a feeling that the people following these matches are less-interested in how good-hearted Perrin Aybara is and more interested in if he could kick Paul’s butt if he *wanted* to; we’re less-interested on whether or not he *would* want to.
Duh. Everyone knows that a boy with a plow beats a trained warrior with razor sharp claws and a pistol every time!