R4M11 Jojolity Delibs

Judge Satoru Akefu (Yuri)

Hey when I said you were getting tens I also meant for Jojolity. For the record.

For Shalin, you were given a bit of a tall order. To embody preservation is to embody the very thing that Shalin represents; you were, in essence, told to ‘embody Shalin’. Show us the head of the Metropolis Suite, how she ticks, how she operates, why she does what she does. What kind of person could twist the innocent thought of preservation to such an extent? How did we get here?

This strat takes that line of thought and runs with it. Every single word has Shalin’s ideals and ideologies baked in. Her hypocrisy, her hate, her downright olympic mental gymnastics. It is all neatly presented, not just in the immaculately written flavor text, but in the mechanical workings of the strategy itself.

Shalin claims to want to keep people out of harm’s way, but draws on them to defend her, to put themselves at risk for her sake - all while she explicitly does her best to defend their property more then the people who own it. Preservation is not applied to the individual. People will not last, but the things they leave behind will. Objects do not age. Thus it is the object that must be preserved. The peaceful silence must be preserved, through tactics explicitly stated as ‘near silent’, but the bloodshed is all completely fine. This is not just an embodiment of preservation, but an embodiment of preservation *as Shalin views it*, and this is made clear at every opportunity.

Vasil and Muuru, two young men with futures ahead of them, are left to bleed out and choke to death in empty alleyways,  just like Galleazo. A preservation of a peace that could only be attained through sickening violence. 10.

Shalin’s Jojolity is one of the finest integrations of Jojolity into mechanics I’ve ever seen, but I need to emphasize that “one of”, because the player strat is equally potent in how it pulls this off. The strat states its terms for the embodiment of creation and destruction, combining them into the endless cycle of “Change” that Shalin wishes to put an end to. I think this very easily could’ve been used to no-sell the jojolity, but such effort is put into defining what change *means*, not just to Muuru and Vasil, but to all three people involved in this match.

The sculpture garden is a powerful way to sum up what this strat seeks to do. Evergreen Streets cannot fight Shalin on her own terms, so they simply don’t, changing the environment into something she cannot possibly exist in. Turning the citizens she would desperately use as mere tools into real, genuine people, who are simply given the knowledge that something is to be seen underneath the old woman’s pleas, and given no further instruction. They are asked, simply, to *change*. Even in the little things - *changing* how Muuru fights, utilizing the saree and breeding the Wheelz to alter how they act, giving his mask to Vasil, all of it is firmly written with the intent of change. You define what your jojolity means, and act upon it wholeheartedly.

If you didn’t score a ten for that, you would for the fact that this strategy made me cry. It has been a long year. I wound up extremely depressed, I moved twice, had a miserable breakup, and throughout it all T7 has been there. For better or for worse, it has been there, and I have written writeups and delibs and all sorts of things. Even when I couldn’t fully be there due to all sorts of difficulties and situations, it has been there, waiting for me. I put a lot into this thing. A lot of writing, a lot of emotion, a lot of myself. Pretty much everyone on this judge team has. And judging, for as much fun as I have with it sometimes, can be a very difficult thing.

I cried reading this strategy because I felt so firmly that it well and truly loved this tournament. Loved the things it wanted to say, the characters it showed, the things that other people had used it to tell. This strategy felt like a letter of love, at least to me. No matter how miserable it could've been (it wasn’t actually that bad), it would’ve been worth it to read this strat. Thank you for loving tournament seven. We’ve got a little more in store for you, so keep on truckin till the end.

10.

Judge Yoshihiro Kira (Extra)

Jojolity:

Starting with the players, I'm not going to bother beating around the bush. This is one of the cleanest **10s** I can recall. Embodying polar opposites in a single Jojolity gave birth to not only some incredible moments of character writing (you fuckin tell her, Vasil) but some incredible integration - using Wheelz to allow people to see Stands, literally destroying a small piece of them to create something new, was inspired. Embodying a cycle in the way that you did is *extremely* difficult under a character limit - giving such a strong feeling of progress in an incredibly short piece of prose perfectly encapsulates the task Muuru and Vasil find themselves faced with ideologically in this match: put an end to everything holding the city down. It's bombastic, it's energetic, it's exactly what the final boss of a narrative-focused tournament like T7 deserves as a sendoff to its final boss. I say this a lot, but this is the first time that I think I could stand by it just as well if I thought on it for a month: no notes.

Moving to Shalin, both the character and the writers had huge shoes to fill here - as mentioned above, T7's narrative focus leaves Shalin with the task of tying up a lot of the biggest arcs and themes that have been going on for four whole rounds, across more than *80* matches, spanning basically a whole year! Needless to say, the bar was high. Similarly needless to say, you cleared it by a country mile. The meticulous care given to every detail of the strategy plays to Shalin's own ideological position - like all climactic battles, beyond the realm of the physical fight lies a broader battle of purpose - and prepares itself to weather any assault. It does not wait for the enemy to strike, but rather relies on it, setting a vicious web to ensnare any would-be rioters. The sense of overwhelming control this strategy inspired befits the leader of the Metropolis Suite herself - and while I did do some beating around the bush here, I'd be remiss not to award a similar **10** given the quality of the character writing, integration, and overall narrative.

Judge Enya (CPU)

Jojolity

It’s very late after a hard day at work, so I’ll be quick.

For both of these, there is a consistent sense of integration that makes these read like narrative strategies. The narrative sections, which may normally be multiple paragraphs each, instead are single ones that help guide the reader into the mindset of the characters themself. For Shalin, it genuinely feels that she is both in control as well as that her methods of winning the match are justified; while contrasting her lengthy justifications and her protection of the environment over the people therein to the casual, vicious murder of Vasil by the end of it. For the players, it’s turning destruction and creation into ‘change’, and embracing a sort of controlled chaos orchestrated by Vasil and taken active advantage of by Muuru. There’s many points that they set up situations where even if Shalin is just as prepared as them for something weird happening, psychologically they make the case of being better suited to the environment they’re creating.

I thought long and hard about what scores I’d give, but it’s late and I’m tired. I immediately thought of a 10 for these strategies when I read them and I feel that the strategies themselves do a great job of advocating for themselves. So read them! What are you doing here! That’s scary!