drop-dead knockout :: [pts responses // cricket antoinette]
Aug 11, 2019 14:33:06 GMT -5
Post by L△LIA on Aug 11, 2019 14:33:06 GMT -5
I AM A DROP-DEAD KNOCKOUT
take a ten and add some zeros
take a ten and add some zeros
Contrary to popular belief, the first four districts are Cricket's least favorites. Brimming over with wasted skill and more ego than creativity, she sighs at every unimaginative bullseye and brute force demand for a spotlight to showcase the same overly-practiced move sets the world has seen year after tiring year. Petty memories of the career kids she shared training centers with as a child still threaten to turn the corners of her lips down, the ghosts of old grudges haunting the movements of a new generation. The same children who once laughed at her own aspirations for a crown might be the very ones who trained Blair Havoc and Claudio Markham, decades after she proved them all wrong and became an untouchable force to be reckoned with.
It takes a conscious effort not to roll her eyes at Callienta and Xenia's enthusiasm for new trends in stealth training and old standards in fighting technique. "She's over eager to prove herself, throwing herself into unbalanced fights like that," Cricket sighs when her fellow gamemakers instinctively look to her following the performance of this year's girl from District Two, "her strengths are also her weaknesses. She won't live long enough to reach her potential." She waves off the expectation to comment on Blair's counterpart entirely. "The grand finale was just him running away." Like this, the first half dozen tributes come and go — children more predisposed to help others than to help themselves, uncomfortable emotional outbursts, a couple decent ideas with questionable execution — without feeling compelled to assert a truly strong opinion. The duo from Three show strong mechanical skills (as the children from Three do every year), undeniable proof that they will do particularly well in this year's technology rich arena. There are impressive elements to both of their performances, but it would have been more notable if there hadn't been. Casual curiosity and inevitable disappointment dance matching circles around her expectations.
By the time Harper Levesque enters the room Cricket has lost her will to turn away offers of wild berry mimosas, holding her pinched fingers up to say well, maybe just a small glass. The performance quickly snares her attention back as the girl from Four scales an archery tower with an armload of rope and a flurry of interesting setup choices... only to waste too much time on frivolous details, getting overly particular about dummy arrangements and fussing with sandbags and catapults. The lull of setup passes a shared sigh from the mouth of one gamemaker and onto the next, none of them knowing who started it, much less who would end it. By the time Harper finally steps onto one of her tightropes, she's lost any hope at true tension in her performance and both Callienta and Xenia flick their gazes to Cricket like a game of Not It, silently defaulting to the person with this very specific technical expertise. "If she trusted herself more, the rope wouldn't bounce quite so much against her footing. Balance isn't about the feet or even the arms, it's about your center." When she says center she means heart, but refrains from saying so because most people find it too difficult to believe she has one. It's an old habit. Every year she needs it more.
A good trainer would have taught Harper to utilize her existing surroundings instead of trying to manipulate her environment into such an over-wrought framework. Tributes won't patiently sit back and allow her to rebuild things to her advantage any more than the gamemakers are inclined to. It's akin to wasted screen time and she's obviously better than this, but too caught up in her own head to consider the possibilities outside of it. When she leaps, the corner of Cricket's lips hitch up at the confirmation that, yes, she's at her best when she lets go. Swinging through the ropes, the girl sends her knives flying and hits mark after impressive mark. Trusting her body to the air is a sight worth watching. "Six," Xenia sighs in obvious response to the mind-numbingly complicated setup, "what was up with the catapult?" Callienta laughs a little and shrugs in response, holding up her own paper to show a nine jotted down beside Harper's name.
Cricket sits back and takes a sip of her drink. "Eight," she declares, eyeing the empty space between the ropes, the empty space above the wreckage of dummies, the empty space where Harper leapt away from what she was taught to rely on and finally put her faith in her own body.
Callienta: 9
Cricket: 8
Xenia: 6
Final Score: 8
Cricket: 8
Xenia: 6
Final Score: 8
