[C&C] Carn Development Thread

[Carn_Val]

Current Threads with me in it:
An Unexpected(?) Anomaly (Finished)
I was dropped into a world full of...nothing. Met a white guy who sent me down in a tumble. 2 white guys started shooting at me and I made...a box! After a day or so, I felt hunger, some fine dude gave me a welcome present and tells me about the Omniverse. I felt better and headed back to the fountain to poach a victim find companions to some other verse.

The Immortal Swordsman (Failed Recruitment)
I meet this cool guy with a cool sword...I wonder if he'll come with me...

Too bad, we didn't get to a decision where to go, we'll keep in touch though, maybe.

Second Chance (Finished)
*yawn*
Got a rude awakening, threw my cleaver at the tall guy and asked questions...
*snores*

Well, somehow, we got along well. Met 2 more meatshields. They seem nice. We're signing up to DA!

CARNEXUS [World Transition Thread Via Nexus]
I lost in DA...doesn't mean I don't get anything, right?

Molly's Cliffhanger(Current)
Well, met Guu and Molly! I wonder what happens next...

Anomaly Visions (Intermissions and access to the Anomaly's mind)
This will show Carn's sidetrips into the Astral Verse, meeting new people and seeing visions of new places, not everything flows well as expected inside an Anomaly's head.

[Carn_Val]

This thread is to help me improve my approach and delivery on everything related to Carn both IC and OOC as I'm still baby steps into the RP biz. Every form of critique and comment is accepted(I can take them, bring it on!) and is greatly encouraged to help me develop myself. Feel free to be as frank as possible provided you point out the bad with some form of correction or suggestion. Your opinion is taken seriously, so don't throw jabs and outburst of mental retardation ,at least not at me. Thanks for reading. That's all for now.

[Erza Scarlet]

Yo. Alright, full disclosure before I start here, I've read your very first post and the stuff in The Immortal Swordsman, but nothing in between.

Now that that's out of the way. Things I liked:

I'm very much a fan of the first person thing. It's refreshing, and different from what other people here do, including myself. It's certainly difficult to do and not many people could pull it off. In fact, I found it difficult to pull myself out of your PoV to read the stuff the other guy in the thread was posting. You're doing cool things with it, too. It's pretty standard to alternate every once in a while between simple thoughts, speech/actions, and descriptions of the environment, but just the fact that you're doing it all from first person makes them intermingle a little better, and I like that a lot.

I do also enjoy the less seemingly relevant thoughts to take a break from the action - ex. the "word train" bit. Neat touch.

Your dialogue seems pretty spot-on for the character you seem to be trying to put across - sort of a goofy-ish dude who only really cares about what interests him. It's unusual for the Omniverse, and it fits your style. Keep at it.

Descriptions. Good. Things like "Rubber-churning skid." "the unpigmented world," and "It will definitely leave a messy stain on this sterile world" certainly are good for retaining the reader's attention. If there's one thing you're reeally good at, it's that.

Lastly, just in general your writing style is interesting. Nothing's worse than trying to slog through a couple thousand words when you're getting distracted and don't really want to read it all anyway. The way you write, though, I doubt I'd be able to stop before finishing. It mostly all flows very well, almost like a YA novel in the way that even the most trivial of developments and sidetracks somehow lead to the next. I have no complaints whatsoever about your style.

"The Ashen Steppes is a 'hotspot', I heard."

Maybe not everyone agrees, but I for one always enjoy a good mid-post pun to break things up.

Stuff I didn't like so much:

This is going to sound pedantic, and I'm sure it is, but there were spots where grammar-y things threw me off a bit. Certainly most readers won't be bothered by it much, but it's a pet peeve of mine when sentences don't quite flow right. Don't get me wrong, your overall cohesiveness on a macro level is still perfect, but it could be improved on the sentence level. I'll take a sample from your posts and change it to how I would personally revise it and see if you see what I mean:

My buddies would always say something about how odd the observable world's people go about with their daily routines. Some thrive to achieve greater purpose, neglecting themselves in the process, some put too much attention to themselves that they start to lose purpose while others just lose themselves and their purpose as they realize just how futile the situation they are born in. Yes, sometime later, these people will be gone from the world, just as the people centuries before them did, and the people before that too and maybe us too after a while. The idea is that something new replaces the old, the old entrusts things to the new and the new continues on and on until they become old as well. A simple cycle, yet very complicated once you notice the little things, this is the idea of progress. However, there is a very small flaw in this cycle, so small yet done so many times that it affects the cycle of progress. Once the old is replaced by the new and the old entrusts the work to the new, the new resumes what the old was doing, then the error occurs. An error of correction and the lack of it in the cycle. As the old instructs the new and entrusts the work to the new, all these do's and do not's pass on as well but somehow, the new only absorbs what the old one does and not what the old does not. This simple flaw passes on to the next one until the new one creates the mistake the old one has done as well. With such a neglected and reccuring flaw, can it still be called "progress"?

Anyways, I was just lost in thought while I'm walking back into the center of the unpigmented world, the ever changing fountain. Somehow, my legs are leading me back here, for what reason? That I do not know. As I walk past the faceless people, those I took no notice of, I start to feel cold, void and empty, like the blanket of space I was born in. Usually, such a feeling would comfort one as they recollect their memories of their youth, not in my case. Such a long time had passed since my initiation, those memories were long forgotten, not by time but by importance. These things aren't important to me, I am an Anomaly, one who exists at the present. An existance born as is, no vulnerability, no end. For as long as time moves, so does an Anomaly. Yes, an Anomaly, and a bored one at that. I try to recall the many games I learned from the Zone and try them out, one at a time.

I would have, without messing with the intent at all, changed this to:

My buddies would always say something about how oddly the observable world's people go about with their daily routines. Some thrive to achieve greater purpose, neglecting themselves in the process; some put so much attention to themselves that they start to lose purpose. Others lose themselves and their purpose as they realize just how futile the situation they were born in really is. Yes, sometime later, these people will be gone from the world, just as the people centuries before them were, and the people before that too and maybe us too after a while. The idea is that something new replaces the old, the old entrusts things to the new and the new continues on and on until they become old as well. A simple cycle, yet very complicated once you notice the little things; this is the idea of progress. However, there is a very small flaw in this machine, miniscule yet repeated so many times that it affects the cycle of progress. Once the old is replaced by the new and the old entrusts the work to the new, the new resumes what the old was doing - then the error occurs: An error of correction and the lack of it in the cycle. As the old instructs the new and entrusts the work to the new, all these methods and warnings pass on as well but somehow, the new only absorbs what the old one does and misses what the old does not. This simple flaw passes on, where the new one creates the mistakes of the old one, and on and on. With such a neglected and recurring flaw, can it still be called "progress"?

Anyway, I was just lost in thought while I was walking back into the center of the unpigmented world, the ever changing fountain. Somehow, my legs are leading me back here, but for what reason? That I do not know. As I walk past the faceless people, those I take no notice of, I start to feel cold, void and empty, like the blanket of space I was born in. Usually, such a feeling would comfort one as they recollect the memories of their youth. Not in my case. Such a long time had passed since my initiation that those memories were long forgotten, not by time but by importance. These things aren't important to me. I am an Anomaly, one who exists in the present. An existence born as is, no vulnerability, no end. For as long as time moves, so does an Anomaly. Yes, an Anomaly, and a bored one at that. (Hahaa, I love this line. Nice segway.) I try to recall the many games I learned from the Zone and try them out, one at a time.

See what I did there? Mostly just fixed some weird run-on sentences in the first paragraph and some equally-weird mid-sentence tense changes (past, present, future) in the second.

That may seem like a very big "complaints" section, but it's just because of the large quote x2. You'll notice that my only complaint here is for grammar. This is good. You've got an approachable and intriguing style and know how to write your character well. Just make sure you go over your stuff again, reading aloud (or at least in your head), and when stuff sounds weird, patch it up a bit. The reader won't ever know the difference as long as it sounds good in the end. And even with the stuff you had at first, it still sounded good in the end.

Those two paragraphs, by the way, were by far the worst in this respect of all of your stuff I've read, and the number of changes therein do not in any way reflect how much I think should be changed in your posts overall. I picked them specifically because there was a lot of stuff that flowed weirdly.

Conclusion: Good stuff m8ey, keep it up, just read over stuff in the end to check for run-on's and strange tense changes.