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It was me who started that back in October, yes? Or was there someone before that?
I don't think I'll make an entry for this round, I have absolutely NO ideas whatsoever.
So I'll just annoy you all with a photo of my Christmas present (I got it early):
It's a "goosh ball", and it is ridiculously fun to play with.
Right, here I am again!
Ubertuna commented on the previous poetry contest, Out of Context Quotes, that not many people made entries that were actually relevant to the subject title. Unlike him, though, I've decided to be extra-harsh (mainly due to time considerations) and have only judged those entries that I deem to be relevant.
But fear not, I shall at least explain what I was thinking!
Truth is, out of all those entries, many of them were arguably related to the theme of Nostalgia, but the operative word here is arguably. Crimsonblade explained it quite well- I wanted to either feel nostalgia or recognise the feeling of nostalgia unequivocally, which in fact is very difficult to do! But I was even more stringent than this.
Many entries portrayed a character who was experiencing nostalgic thoughts, but unfortunately many of these could have been taken as a simple wistfulness, regret, misery or any number of other emotions. There are two realistic ways I can think of articulating the theme, both of which were covered by the entries which I have ultimately decided to place.
But first, I need to mention The Champion's Exhibit. By now most of you may have forgotten that Cholokid won the previous round for his hilarious DBZ parody, and here he comes with another well recognised joke:
Frankly whenever I think of Piccolo I also happen to think of pickles, so this made me laugh. I will further mention now that between the caption and the picture, this picture is actually relevant to the theme so even more well done on this count!
And since I'm short on time, I'm gonna cut straight to the chase:
Grand Winner: Cenere
Were it not for Zophia saying the image was clickable, I would not have thought to check until judging time and therefore would have gotten quite a surprise. I particularly like the picture for the following reasons:
1) The colour scheme is nearly monochromatic, which references a popular device used for conveying nostalgic themes (particularly in sepia tones!)
2) The scenes at the top convey (what I consider to be) universally recognised scenes that evoke a sense of nostalgia, that being of the innocence and carefree days of childhood.
3) Some might say that this is too predictable, but the picture explores deeper meanings to nostalgia, via the phone, and the text on the screen which reads: "Calling home: engaged". Often one is nostalgic for a time which is long gone, which has irretrievably slipped into the past.
So yes, there you have it. I of course acknowledge that certain participants tend to have much success with my style of judging and that's because the competition has not that many participants so my bias is going to be very apparent. The next placing isn't going to do anything to change this, either.
Second Place: Gantic- Fits the Fish
...Though it may surprise many of you that the person most likely to approach the theme from an abstract angle seems to have done something that I consider relevant to the theme! Have I gone mad!? Have I somehow contradicted myself, thus bringing about the end of the competition as we know it!?
Of course not. Again, the notion of universality comes up- that most of us, if not all of us has in fact drawn (and I would bet money on this) a fish and the sea and the sun in crayon sometime in our childhood. I remember Ricador said that the title made the piece, and while I also remember saying that in one round in the past that this was the case, I'm actually going to disagree here. Here, it is the context that made the piece.
I suspect most of you, such as crimson, pedspog, zophia and slliM (that's off the top of my head) will be wondering why I've mentioned these pieces and not yours...what the difference could possibly have been. Universality is one of them, but then one could argue that Deth4, with his Coke ad, would have passed muster (the problem there was that Coke is still current, so it takes more than subject matter to convey nostalgia). Here is one place where in both cases the technical aspects, especially the choice of medium emulated has come in rather instrumental as part of a whole. Memories are sketchy. Heck, just the mere mention of crayon is enough to make people nostalgic. Well, at least me, who last used the blasted things somewhere between a fourth and a fifth of his current age.
So there you have it. I wouldn't say that I rated the pieces so much as chose a couple of representative ones, and once again I apologise for not being able to be more thorough. I probably won't be on until after Christmas, so have a good one, and I'll catch you on the other side.
Oh yeah. Finally: as predicted, Klaushouse gets a DM for ripping a screenshot of Games of Gondor, lol. Your forfeit shall be to dunk your head in a bucket of soot :P