Results[]
Tuesday, August 27th, 2013
Ulti's Analysis[]
A stat got thrown around during this match that just absolutely killed me: L-Block has only ever lost a match when Pokemon is involved.
And it's actually true! He won the entire contest in 2007, and not once in that entire run did he have to face a Pokemon. In 2008 he won two matches, then lost in round 3 to Pikachu. In 2010, he won two matches and then lost in round 3 to Charizard.
So in a way, it almost shouldn't have been a surprise that L-Block pulled off yet another huge upset in a contest setting, but because of how prevalent the sophomore slump theory is, people pick against any "joke" character once their initial contest passes. L-Block is a different beast though, because he is still 4chan's baby and is practically guaranteed to never lose a close match here.
That being said, it took awhile before L-Block got a head of steam here. Auron built up an 80 vote lead early, lost it all in literally one update, then fought off the stall and got the lead back up to 100 seemingly just as fast. It continued like this for about 4 hours, with Auron building a small lead, losing it, rinse and repeat. But once 4:30 or so hit, 4chan took over, L-Block took off, and that, as they say, is that. L-Block never looked back, and then I saw that stat about L-Block and Pokemon that still just kills me.
This set up a ton of L-Block hype, especially with people wanting to anti-rally Draven so badly, but it wasn't until Mario's loss to Vivi where people thought the entire Noble Nine could potentially all lose before the divisionals were even decided. Think about that for a second. A contest in tribute of the Noble Nine, and people seriously considering not one of them winning a division. That is nuts.
Zen's Analysis[]
Back when L-Block first won a contest, everyone was in on the joke. That's the general consensus today, although you'll still get some of the OG BUTTDEVESTATED people with no sense of humor that didn't find that contest fun.
Now, L-Block has some decent strength, people still vote for him because they think it's funny. Yeah, I guess it still is to some extent. I think there's also some respect for the former champion that brought the internet together, and some users are still chasing that high.
In 2013, though, 4chan was really the only one who thought a second L-Block victory would be "teh lulz" or whatever, so they rallied him again semi-successfully. It's scary to consider that the 4chan rallies we once feared are so substantially weaker than those of Reddit/Tumblr/Twitter.
Auron should have been able to pull this off, but 4chan took advantage of the low votals once more to give L-Block the edge here, but having L-Block in Round 3 over Auron wouldn't change Round 3's result much.
https://imgtc.com/i/pn1WK9p.png
Ezio did OK here, he'll probably be back for one last hurrah if anyone remembers to nominate him. Hey, Ezio fans reading this, what do you think of the current state of Assassin's Creed? Have any protagonists come close to Ezio in terms of likability?