Law and Disorder - Judy Hopps vs. Chara (OOC)

[Moon]

Alright, so I got only a little bit left. I'm gonna get busy and have this post out soon.

[Super Mario]

It's done. I'm just barely not late, too. Nice.

[Marisa Kirisame]

Ill get it done and hmm I should get to 8000 om to get my alt

[Corporal Light]

Round 2 Damage Meter!

Original DMG:

Judy Hopps: 16/20
Chara: 15/20

Round 2 DMG:

Chara -
2 Accumulated Damage
1 Serious Injury - 5 Damage (Shot in the throat)

Judy -
2 Accumulated Damage

Current Damage:
Chara - 8/20
Judy Hopps - 14/20

Onto Round 3!

[Marisa Kirisame]

Judy it is your turn make it a Grand finale!

[Moon]

Indeed it is! I'll have it done today/tomorrow.

[Moon]

I was wrong. But I still got it done, and Judy got in a bit of an emotional moment here.

Overall, I gotta say, my writing was... subpar. Even for my standards. I think that by the time I hit my stride (third post), there wasn't much else to do. But hey. I think that I learned a few things. That's what really matters, right?

Now, though, it's up to Sallad and his judgement. Chara, great work on the fight!

[Marisa Kirisame]

My writing is usually subpar but I think i'm getting better and I loved this fight Thanks Judy and hope I can write with ya some time again

[Sans]

Alright.

Just to let you both know, I am not using a point system for this. I am, for the most part, not someone who thinks they are something to be used for reviews, so it will work like this: Posts containing first, Chara's review, second, Judy's review, and third, the winner. I hope that makes sense!

First up, Chara!

[spoiler]I will not lie. The first two posts were not an easy read, and all for the wrong reasons. The third was marginally better, but not by much. You have a lot of areas that need to be improved on, which I will cover step by step.

First, grammar. This is a problem that plagues literally all three of your posts. Not once did I find a sentence that was grammatically correct in the slightest, which really hurt the quality of the posts. One reoccurring grammar problem was the dreaded "run-on sentence." Basically, a run-on is a sentence that is composed of more than one sentence without a punctuation break, like a period. Some posts had entire PARAGRAPHS, if you can call them those, that were composed of just one incredibly long run-on sentence. For instance:

As Chara swiped her knife at Carrots over there she couldn't seem to be able to hit her target and after each swing she felt her self strikes becoming more and more uncontrolled then judy pulled out what Chara could tell was a gun and started to fire Chara at the last moment "Glitched" out of the way and smiled grinning from ear to ear "What's so funny?"

I'm not even sure if this was going to be several sentences or not, considering you also capitalized your words at random, but this is NOT how to grammar properly. Now, this is an easy fix: every sentence you make, you add a period or a similar punctuation mark at the end of it. Doing this, you can turn that little piece of work into this:

As Chara swiped her knife at Carrots over there she couldn't seem to be able to hit her target and after each swing she felt her self strikes becoming more and more uncontrolled. Then, Judy pulled out what Chara could tell was a gun and started to fire. Chara, at the last moment, "glitched" out of the way and smiled, grinning from ear to ear, "What's so funny?"

Now, I still had to do several other things to make the whole paragraph at least readable; a testament to how poor the overall grammar is. Overall, the posts look like they were typed up in about two minutes or less and received only a cursory glance during editing. In layman's terms, they look extremely unpolished, and in layman's layman's terms, they look really lazy. This can solved by just reading over your work for more than a second, and actually spending a good amount of time on a post before posting it. Most of my posts can take a total of up to one full hour, and that's WITHOUT the editing.

As for descriptions, you and Judy share several problems, which are as follows: Repetition and Brevity. You tend to repeat words a lot in your posts, most notably the word "glitched," which shows up constantly. You also repeat descriptions as well. For example:

she nodded to her plan and started to stagger left and right in a line and started to pick up speed until she was running left and right at Judy

I do not need to be told she is running left and right because you had already said she was moving left and right (which I'm also assuming you mean left TO right?)

Repetition breeds contempt, which is why you should always reread your posts to ensure you don't end up repeating yourself. To avoid repeating words, keep a dictionary and thesauri on hand at all times while writing, so you can look up additional words if you find yourself repeating them. For repeating names, you can instead use descriptions based on the character. For example, instead of saying "Judy did X" or "The rabbit did X," say "The grey-furred hare did X" or "The flatfoot did X." For repeating descriptions like the one I showed you, just reread your posts and delete anything that looks like a repeat of a previous sentence.

As for the Brevity, don't take this as me saying less words = bad writing. This is not really the case. What I'm actually saying is that there isn't enough description for me to get a firm sense of what is going on. I have no idea what the environment looks like, the physical state of the characters, and ESPECIALLY what the moves look like. Stuff like this brings up atmosphere and makes it stand out, but your descriptions overall lack vividness. As a suggestion, walk around your room and find two or three objects in there you think stand out. Then, write down a description of your room, taking care to point out those three objects in proper detail. Leave the rest to imagination. This is a good way to start, I feel. You can also use the aforementioned dictionary and thesauri to help with this as well. This DOES get a bit better by the third post, thankfully, as you added in environment descriptions with the reddened floor and fountain.

However, by far and away the thing that hurt you the most, aside from grammar, was characterization. Not through lack of trying, I feel; you clearly made an attempt to have me connect emotionally with Chara and make her personality obvious. Now, you did do a decent job at it a couple of times, as some dialogue bits sounded rather Chara-like. For instance:

"I always win, It doesn't matter where my enemies go, I will find them and I will kill them."

Displays Chara's ruthlessness, confidence in herself, and her general nature. Nice job here.

However, stuff like that is few and far between in all of your posts, instead replaced by what I can only describe as "random emotional moments." Again, I appreciate the attempt to make Chara look like more than a raging psychopath, but every attempt falls flat on its face due to the fact that there is, A., zero build-up to each and every emotional moment, and B., some of said moments feeling shoe-horned in and just plain don't make sense. For example, take a look at this:

So Judy started to reload her gun and Chara had a flash back about Mettaton Neo and Frisk who gave the Undergrounds only star no mercy and right then and there her soul poped up out of nowhere and showed streaks of black in it she looked down, and she started to Laugh and cry at the same time.

First off, why? Why did Chara get a flashback to that moment in particular? And how in hell did THAT moment, of all moments, start making her laugh and cry at the same time? There is zero explanation/correlation here (further exacerbated for me personally, as I know for a fact that these two situations are two completely different entities; there is nothing here to make Chara flashback to Neo. Nothing. See what I mean about it looking ham-fisted?)

Also as an example:

"You know you will never be a real cop, no matter what you do I will never be the hero why should I when every one looks at me as a monster, and you should!"

This entire dialogue bit made absolutely no sense. What is she even saying? I'm not even certain if this is supposed to be one of those emotional moments I mentioned.

And finally:

"I guess I didn't get Frisk, if you ever meet a kid that is like me tell her that she," tears streaming down her face and between each word she is gasping for air "keep doing her pacifist ways and that she may escape this world and tell mom and dad to not cry"

Again, completely out of nowhere. If this had been executed well, this would've been a great moment, as it made Chara look sympathetic and humanized her. However, due to the lack of build-up and, again, no reason for her to think these things, it comes off as forced.

Nailing emotional moments isn't easy, but if you take some time to set up WHY a character thinks the way they do, even for just a paragraph, then you go a long way in connecting the characters to the audience and make them CARE. As for me, though, I did not connect with Chara, so I did not care about her.

Not much to say on story aside from two things: Lack of attention to detail, and it being tension-less. The actual premise is solid, and the story told in the fight is okay for the most part. However, what you suffered from a bit was a lack of attention to detail. If you've written before, you might be aware of the term "willing suspension of disbelief." Basically, the job as a writer is not to make a work realistic, but believable, and the audience willingly trades their disbelief on more fantastical elements in exchange for you being consistent. In short, as long as you remain consistent in any writing, you can get away with fantastic shit.

However, there were some times where the events of the story didn't match with the stuff I found on the rosters. For instance, how does Judy manage to fire more than eight rounds in her pistol without reloading? How does Chara manage to fire off the red slashes within what I can only guess is a couple of seconds when it requires a 10 second charge up? Minor stuff, but they break immersion.

As for the tension I mentioned, this is less because of description, but more because both characters got injured too FAST, I believe. Some of the more serious shit like the broken bones lose impact if they far too injured far too early on. Just wanted to add that in.


Overall, your writing definitely needs a lot of work. It'll get better if you keep trying, though probably only if you do what I'm saying you should do here.[/spoiler]

[Sans]

Annnnnnd now for Judy!

[spoiler]
Like with Chara, I'm gonna cover what I thought could use work and what I thought was good step by step. As for writing quality, it could still use some work, but you are getting there! Just some general improvements is needed, really.

Let's start with grammar. There wasn't anything in your posts that was completely and utterly atrocious in terms of grammar, so I am happy to tell you the posts were more or less readable. However, there were some odd sentences here and there that feel very good once I read them aloud. For example:

Judy was dodging swipe after swipe from Chara, and Chara glitching herself out of the way from every punch or kick Judy tried.

I get what you're trying to say, but this doesn't quite sound too good when I read it aloud. I feel like stuff like this could have been revised into something more like:

Judy dodged swipe after swipe from Chara, with Chara glitching herself out of the way of every punch or kick Judy made.

Not perfect, but it reads a lot better in my eyes. Don't be afraid to decrease the amount of words by saying stuff like "dodged" or "sliced," instead of "was dodging" or "was slicing." It reads a whole lot better and makes the overall flow work a whole lot better.

One way you can fix this is actually really simple: do what I did and read every post you make to yourself. Trust me. You WILL know whether something sounds odd if you read it to yourself, as well as know what you will have to change. It's one of the best fixes of silly grammar mistakes and is almost infallible.

Next is description. Nothing bad, but nothing spectacular either. However, as I might have said in Chara's review, you and him/her share the common problem of repetition. I noticed a whole lot of the word "slice," for instance, in the first post. Again, like with Chara, I suggest the usage of a thesauri and dictionary to use when you notice you use a lot of the same words.

There's another common problem that you and him/her share: the "Show, Don't Tell" technique. If you don't know what it is, it's basically that: Showing how a character feels/looks/acts instead of telling us it. It's generally accepted that, in most cases, you should show, rather than tell, the reader what is happening. It's mostly because it plays to the reader's intelligence, so spoon-feeding them information by telling us the information is kinda insulting to their intelligence (note: I'm not sure if this is the actual reason. I could be making this shit up as I go along for all we know.)

Anywho, you did have a lot of cases of "telling" in your posts. Now, I do not blame either of you for doing it; it is not an easy thing to balance out. However, a lot of what was told could be very easily inferred by the reader. For instance:

Chara had lost her balance, and had stumbled a bit.

I don't need you to tell me Chara lost her balance when you said she stumbled a bit. And another:

The girl, on the other hand, laughed with some kind of sick pleasure.

I can infer, just based on what I've already read of Chara in this same thread, that she would laugh because she's enjoying the fight.

There's other examples of this, but these stood out to me the most. Now, one way to fix this is to read over your posts and see how many cases of "telling" you can find in there. If you find anything that can be "shown," (e.g how a character feels, how a character looks, etc.) then try and show it! For example, instead of telling us that "X is angry," try and SHOW us he's angry through anything that you want! (If you're a fan of metaphors/similes, this would be a great time to use them.) Don't be mad at yourself if you don't get it right the first few times; I didn't either xD.

One last really major thing about your descriptions was that, like Chara's, it was too BRIEF. I never really got a sense as to what the area looked, what the characters looked like, what ANYTHING looked like. The descriptions lacked vividness, and it felt like it was taking place in its own contained "box," if that makes any sense. This was why I commended Chara for introducing environmental descriptions in her third post; I finally got to know how the area looked! Now, this is easily solvable. Firstly, try and take a moment at some point during your posts to write out what everything looks like, smells like, tastes like, feels like, etc, particularly surroundings and character appearance. Doing this can connect people to the writing and draw them in, keeping them engaged throughout the whole thing.

Also, remember, it's ALWAYS less about the fight itself, and more about the PEOPLE fighting.

There are some other nitpicky stuff, like the copient amount of adverbs and the incorrect usage of some words (a scar is a healed wound, not a wound you receive xD,) but nothing that can't be easily fixed.

However, I will say that your saving grace throughout the whole posts was characterization. It was solid, for the most part, and in some cases, I think I got a better sense of Chara's character through your posts than Chara's. This is thanks to some good dialogue bits throughout, as well as some moments in between the fighting where I got an insight into Judy's character. This is what I figured out:

Judy: Former cop, Current Avenger, hates killing, peace-lover.

I'd say that's about right. And with that, I think the absolute best part of your writing was this:

"You're... a kid. A really messed up kid, but you get my point. Obviously something happened that really screwed you up. You don't have to be like this. I can help! I... want to help." She held out her paw, trying to ignore the burning pain in her chest. Broken ribs. "I swear, I'll do everything in my power to save you from-" A wet cough of blood cut her off for a moment. But she continued. "You can't keep hurting people like this. It's despicable! How do you even sleep at night?!" She was yelling now, tears threatening to leak from her eyes. Whether this was from the pain she was going through, or the emotional pain that she was feeling from Chara's murderous ways, she wasn't even sure.

I'll admit, I'm a freak for emotional moments. I love them. I see stuff like this as testaments to how good someone's characterization is, so excellent job here!

However, there is also the general story that we must talk about it. And I hate to say it, but it might be the worst part of the writing for a few reason. Again, premise was good, but there was some parts throughout the whole piece that didn't sit well for me at all. Two things destroyed it for me: Lack of attention to detail and Tension. Let's start with tension.

Like with Chara, I feel as if both parties got hurt WAY too fast and got WAY too severely injured early on. It killed the tension for me personally because, as I said in Chara's posts, my willing suspension of disbelief was being stretched due to me constantly asking "How are these two still alive and fighting?" I will not lie. Most of the injures Judy and Chara got by the end of the first round were stuff that I would see more of by the third round. ESPECIALLY the headshot, which ties into the lack of attention to detail. I nitpicked a little bit on Chara for not quite following what each Roster says, but you doing the same thing was a problem I had to point out. For instance:

Evil or not, she had just shot a little girl in the head.

First of all, if this was a real fight, and someone looked at Chara's roster, this would be a red flag. Because Chara DOES NOT have Survival, which is about the only move I can think of as to how Chara could survive getting shot in the head. The fight should have ended there, but it didn't. There were also some other non-move related stuff, like this:

Her sentiments were interrupted by Chara standing and smirking, taking her hand off her throat.

"Well... either way, there's no saving me now. But I can destroy you, coward,"

I'm pretty certain that would be more like:

Her sentiments were interrupted by Chara standing and smirking, taking her hand off her throat.

"*gurglegurglegurglegurglegurglegurgle*- rd"

Now, again, this is solvable. Just make sure you have the Roster's up so that you don't end up doing something you very clearly can't, because this hurt your posts in my eyes.

Overall, it wasn't bad, but it could still use some work.[/spoiler]


ANNNNNNNND WITHOUT FURTHER BULLSHIT, HERE IS OUR WINNER!

[spoiler][/spoiler]

CONGRATULATIONS!

You can kill or spare Chara.

[Moon]

Thanks so much for the judging, Sans. I'll try to keep this in mind as I continue writing, as well as in the next mock fight.