10-26-2015, 07:50 PM
Stream of Consciousness
[spoiler]Gildarts 1
Commas? I feel like there are a lot of sentences that need some of them.
Gladiator-esque is a fun word. I think I would have preferred a quick blurb rather than a catch-all term, though.
“The scent of blood nibbled at his nose and his senses grew muddled with the incessant crackling of distant fans. The honor he bore so openly on his chest now tangled with nerves that weighed heavy on his mind.” <- Really enjoyed this line.
“Every time he fought, it was with purpose, to prove them wrong.” I liked what you were going for her, but the sentence felt off. It’s like, my eyes knew what I was reading but it took my brain a moment to process the sentence. Maybe an em-dash (—) instead of a comma. They serve the same grammatical function, but there’s just a certain degree of ‘uumph!’ when your eyes are led directly to what should be a powerful conclusion by a straight line, rather than dropping down to glance at a comma.
“A gong was bashed and radiated with sound.” I didn’t like this sentence or its placement. It just felt thrown in at the end of a stare-off. And I mean, I know the gong makes a noise when it’s hit, so I guess if you wanted to include that, maybe add a splash more onto that.
The force tore (rived) her shift apart?! That’s some intense force.
“The snout of her weapon aimed at Gildarts, and it didn’t take long for her finger to find the trigger. Bullets shredded into the air and the cascade of their thunder followed.” Here is an example of where I wasn’t a fan of a sentence (it just seemed very drawn out for what I perceived as a quick, almost staccato motion), and then the sentence that followed it was absolute gold.
“He winced and a hand reached as though to clear away the stinging, yet though the veteran could not see, not a moment of his focus detached from her growing footsteps.” This is a whole lot of sentence that I somewhat stumbled through.
“Immediately, the woman recoiled at the immense force and her fingers went numb just long enough for her grip to loosen from the hammer, it was flung aside.” Again, I really like the imagery in this sentence, but it’s just a whole lot of sentence.
If you noticed, the majority of your paragraphs (at least on my screen) are four lines long. Then you have a seven, and then you have a five and a two. It might not be something major, but you might want to experiment a little with paragraph sizes. I try (the key word is try) to use stuff like paragraph size and shape to enhance the ebb and flow of a post, and it’s a trick I’d recommend anyone practice.
---
Bandit 1
“A jolt of fear stabbed through the bandit as she marveled at his durability, and her hesitation took a moment too many.” – I liked this little line for the insight it gives into the character. Although outwardly savage, it’s obvious she isn’t completely savage on the inside (although I guess I still have more to read)
“Slowing to a stop, her nose caught the sweet scent of diesel and her attention fell upon her lost sledgehammer.” – I would have yelled at you, had you not made some mention of smells.
“The woman snatched the tape-wrapped haft and slowly stood, not allowing her eyes to leave her opponent, and hefted her trophy weapon up onto her shoulder.” – You guys are both really alike. You both like these large, complex sentences. Sometimes I enjoy them, and then there are other times where they’re just a whole lot of sentence.
Ahhh, she light a cigarette with her giant, fire-breathing hammer. *Shia Labeauf clap*
“The twin shockwaves exploded in almost equal potency, the flaring white of Gildarts’ Parry intertwining with the combusting orange conflagration of Sledge’s Hammer. The forms within seemed nothing more than silhouettes in the light of the eruption before they were each flung in opposite directions.” – Lovely image.
“Careening across the arena, ash trailing her, the bandit slammed into the edge of the stone rampart, a few bricks crumbling down as she spiraled onward.” – I know this is grammatically correct, but I also wound up stumbling through the last segment.
“Scrambling to her feet, the bandit stumbled towards the center of the ring, sky swirling overhead, vision twisting with every step. Staggering along, she couldn’t help but stop, lean on a post, and puke her brains out. As she rested, heaving for breath, she saw the tip of a shoe peeking out from behind a chunk of stone.” – After writing my own fight filled with excessive blood, it was nice to see some vomit. I also appreciated that third comma in that sequence of actions.
---
Gildarts 2
“The cringeworthy crunch of bone and muscle mashed sickeningly together in her ears.” A lot of adverbs in here, but I like the imagery, even if it took me a moment after this sentence to realize this was the Bandit’s perspective.
“Meanwhile, the invisible punch still throbbed at her jaw, there was a never-ending pitch in her ears, and the bandit could only hold her head to steady the damage done.” – Look at that perfect list of items and commas and visual imagery. Good stuff.
“It had been where the hammer and his magic ignited, he now couldn’t feel anything other than the stabbing of spear shrapnel that clung, embedded deep into his inside” - I’m aware that this is certainly grammatically correct, but I’ll be danged if I wouldn’t have just made two separate sentences.
“Specks of crimson rain trailed on the ground, he clenched his side and his face wore an expression of weary torment. Another step delivered him right into the bandit’s crosshairs. He had blown her to the other side of the coliseum! But the distance gave her an advantage, now, she didn’t have to be close to hit him. A greasy smile spread across her bruised lips as she whispered so silently, so surely, “You’re mine.” – I may have read this wrong, but I wasn’t huge on the blending of perspective (or at least that’s how I perceived it). We have Gildarts walking and clutching. Then an exclamatory remark (I like seeing an exclamation point, although it felt weird hidden in the middle of this paragraph). Then we have the bandit sizing up a shot and speaking.
“And she kept firing.” – Lovely use of italics. This and the description of the wounds was brilliant imagery.
“The earth below his feet cackled as his energy was unleashed.” – I don’t know if I like the word cackled here, even if I knew what you were trying to do with it.
“Glowing eyes slanted in malevolent crimson diamonds. The cape flickered behind him, sawing vehemently against the newfound wind.” – Really loved the cape description, but I spent too much time trying to process the first part. I know you were trying to say they were sparkling and red, but I just couldn’t figure out what ‘slanted’ was in the context? Just how the diamonds in this metaphor are sideways (which is what it would take for it too look like eyes?)
“Whether it was intentional, or fully out of the churning fear that grew in her stomach, no one would know, as Gildarts reached for the gun and held it in his hands before applying enough force with his hands to break it in two.” – A lot of sentence
“The weapon, seemingly a pesky annoyance for the magical guy with bullshit powers, was tossed aside after a notable crack could be seen forming in the blackened steel snout.” – I reread this and laughed after recalling bandit’s previous post.
Bandit 2
Gildarts is really channeling his inner Goku. Being all (seemingly) overpowered and all like ‘U weak, give up, yo. Or I beat u up.’
“Her brown eyes locked onto the burning slits in the shadow, her defiant stare refusing to diminish even as he crushed the life out of her. “Heh,” she choked, a bloody grin splitting her mask of paint, “I was kinda hoping you’d ‘force’ me to use this.” – Now I picture Gildarts having like, stereotypical slanty evil eyes.
“I was kinda hoping you’d ‘force’ me to use this.” – I added sarcastic air quotes as I read this. I hope that was the intended effect.
“A blaze split the earth, sputtering red licked out from the cracks of the fissure before a pulse of harnessed horsepower shattered the ground below Gildarts’ feet, blowing his up and away in a swath of fire. /// Gildarts released his opponent as he stumbled backwards over the collapsing earth, quickly regaining his footing in the broad crater that had formed underneath him.” – At first, I read this as Gildarts being hurled up into the air by another explosion. The next sentence led me to believe that it was more so a chunk of the earth shooting up? Either way, I got a little confused.
“The glowing red things that were once his eyes searched the area and found the wily desert-dweller already as far away as one of the tall stone barricades that dotted the battlefield.” – I think I get the metaphor you were going for in your previous post, Sam. Also, now I just see Wil E Coyote. I hope this ends with anvils.
“to the problem of abject horseshit that now persecuted her.” – Ahahahahaahaha
“The ground split as Gildarts trod forward, air crackling with lightning at the very presence of his power. Finding himself before the obstacle, he planted both hands on the wall and a white light shined from within it, a gleaming grid forming over its surface that quickly grew brighter. With a flash, the barricade exploded into a series of tiny hexahedrons, scattering into the air and crumbling before him like so many children’s playthings.” – This is probably my favorite paragraph you’ve wrote thus far.
“A thunderous CLANG rang out as the hammer impacted the weapon” – More curious than anything why you didn’t decide to italicize the onomatopoeia
…Jesus, she lost her arm. And here I was two posts ago remarking about not seeing much blood. lol
---
Gildarts 3
I am curious if the arm thing was something Frisco ran passed you or just threw on your lap. Gildarts is obviously not a dude to go ripping or hacking off limbs, so I can imagine it could have been planned as a curveball.
Nah, scratch that. Gildarts’ like ‘WHATEVER YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF.’
“He could still feel the distant tingle of his fingertips, and now, she would be like him. He had overestimated himself then, and today, he had overestimated her.” – This sentence is a veritable sea of pronouns, but I still love it.
“Air splashed into her lungs, but not fast enough. Bandit howled as her other, gravel-caked hand met the warm, juicy blood that poured from her bicep. Her blood-chilling caterwaul quickly filled the arena, prickling even the villains in the audience who had half a heart. Dry gulps forced down her throat in a vain attempt to swallow the profound pain. She could not set aside the endless inferno of her suffering, and she was drowning in it.” – And this is the best paragraph YOU have written in this fight thus far. Holy crap.
“Their skin became pale and flushed; both had lost blood, both seemed to have been hit with the savage blow of unearthly revelation, and both seemed to be standing on their last leg, each of their endurance trickling where it had once flowed in the whirling streams of combat.” – A lovely (grammatically correct) sentence, although part of me feels like it could have ended after leg.
“Salty sweat” – I know you love images and want to plug in some notion of the various senses, but I did kind of chuckle at this, because I’ve never known sweat to be anything but salty. I did like the part that followed.
As my students would say after reading the part where Gildarts tears off his own (fake) arm: “That ***** savage!”
---
Bandit 3
Your use of such lovely dialogue makes me yearn for a type of ‘fuck you, fuck YOU, fuck all of you’ type of character that can just shout things like ‘You limbless fuck’ and it is completely in line with who she or he is. Oh and then it gets followed with her getting cold-cocked in the face.
You guys have such fun vocabularies. I’m pretty sure no other fight would have used the word caterwaul not once, but twice.
What a cool exchange. To have them just so viciously try and destroy one another to them just like, agreeing not to go the entire way and murder-kill. Really liked it.
Even though I knew you wrote it, I still chuckled at the ‘Stop Hitting Yourself’ line
Also a very fabulous close. People always yearn to have the very first post, but I’m a fan of having the last post… especially when you can end on such a powerful note.[/spoiler]
Score Card
I apologize, as I’m sure that many of the categories may have bled over in my head.
Gildarts
"Description and Clarity:
3 – I really like your work, and I think you do a very great job at scene-crafting. I do think there’s still room for improvement in this area. You like a lot of metaphors/similies and creating very vivid imagery. But for me (and I hope I highlighted enough examples above), it was a little hit-and-miss at times. Pick your moments. Overall above average compared to our peers, though.
Voice:
3 – My main thing here is to work on your pacing. By that I mean, mix it up. I’m going to probably repeat this same thing on Bandit’s card, but I felt like I was reading ‘Duel of the Long, Flowery (and yes, well-written) Sentences.’ There’s nothing wrong with that, because the writing was solid, but personally I’m someone who likes to see shifts and breaks. You had some of them, but they were drowned out among the other stuff. Experiment. Play around with paragraph breaks and paragraph sizes.
Character:
3 – Gildarts is pretty beastly. He’s like a giant magic rock in a sea of silliness, whether that’s in DA or in this fight. My issue is that… it kind of felt like he was just soldiering through events. Bandit became this rabid machine of a woman as the fight wore on, but aside from when he went full-on Broly ‘Power Level Maximum,’ I had a hard time connecting with Gildarts. You did a good job of capturing his injuries in that final post, but while you described it very well, I didn’t really feel with him. I mean, the dude was clearly well enough (or loco enough, maybe?) to tear off his own arm.
Story:
2.5 - You do a great job of progressing the story, matching the escalating violence with even more violence. I do, however, think you may have taken the short-end of the stick with a few of the story progressions. It felt like, on many occasions, you were reacting to the fallout from bandit posts, and in the cases where you could have spun the momentum your way (like Gildarts de-arming himself), you placed that near the end of your post, where bandit grabbed the ball and ran with it. Another interesting thing is that the majority of the dialogue you wrote was for the other character. Part of this might be that bandit is chattier than Gildarts but still. This isn’t to say that you didn’t craft a nice story, but to me, it felt like you were the junior partner.
Grammar and Spelling:
3.5 – You have no typos, but I’d keep an eye on commas. Just because word or google drive says you don’t need one doesn’t mean you don’t need one (I made that sentence grammar poor on purpose, because I’m a funny guy). Otherwise you have better control over this category than many members.
Total = 15
Bandit
"Description and Clarity:
3 – Solid. I did kind of fumble through a few of the set-pieces, because I have a tendency to read things out loud and verbatim. So I tend to stagger to the end of very long sentences. In terms of the description, you were solid. All the bloodshed and the detail of the various magical spells worked (oddly) somewhat more in your favor than the person actually using them.
Voice:
3 – This might be cheap, but I want to give you the same ‘advice’ I gave Gildarts. Try to experiment a little with how you structure sentences and paragraphs. You have a little more of that than she does, but I definitely think it’s something you could try and experiment with in the future.
Character:
3 – I have very little to go off of, but I still don’t feel like I’ve grasped the bandit. Don’t get me wrong, I like her and I like what I’m reading. But I’m still trying to process whether or not she’s some sort of sociopath or something else. Bear in mind, this fight is my sample size (plus the short conversations on the topic we’ve had on skype). I was kind of amused at the juxtaposition between being cordial and almost knightly and the grotesque violence that bookended the exchange in the final post. In a weird way, it will hook me in the long-term, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about bandit. I don’t hate her, but it’s not like I have any reason to like her.
Story:
4 – I stated this in Gildart’s scorecard, but I felt like you (your writing) controlled much of the tempo of this fight (and thus, the story). Aside from having to cope with the Tier 2, I felt like your posts directed much of the action. Even when bandit wasn’t being written by you, it still felt like she was in control of the story. On top of that, I felt like bandit’s ‘arc’ was the more compelling of the two, even if I’m conflicted and confused about her character (for now, I’m sure). How would anyone in that audience not want to cheer for that woman?
Grammar and Spelling:
4 – Solid. I think I maybe caught a handful of moments where punctuation was weird, but at the end of the day I’m not comfortable enough with my own editorial skills to give you a 5, as I’m sure a professional editor would have a keener eye than me. I hope that’s understandable.
Total = 17
Winner is Bandit with No Name
[spoiler]Gildarts 1
Commas? I feel like there are a lot of sentences that need some of them.
Gladiator-esque is a fun word. I think I would have preferred a quick blurb rather than a catch-all term, though.
“The scent of blood nibbled at his nose and his senses grew muddled with the incessant crackling of distant fans. The honor he bore so openly on his chest now tangled with nerves that weighed heavy on his mind.” <- Really enjoyed this line.
“Every time he fought, it was with purpose, to prove them wrong.” I liked what you were going for her, but the sentence felt off. It’s like, my eyes knew what I was reading but it took my brain a moment to process the sentence. Maybe an em-dash (—) instead of a comma. They serve the same grammatical function, but there’s just a certain degree of ‘uumph!’ when your eyes are led directly to what should be a powerful conclusion by a straight line, rather than dropping down to glance at a comma.
“A gong was bashed and radiated with sound.” I didn’t like this sentence or its placement. It just felt thrown in at the end of a stare-off. And I mean, I know the gong makes a noise when it’s hit, so I guess if you wanted to include that, maybe add a splash more onto that.
The force tore (rived) her shift apart?! That’s some intense force.
“The snout of her weapon aimed at Gildarts, and it didn’t take long for her finger to find the trigger. Bullets shredded into the air and the cascade of their thunder followed.” Here is an example of where I wasn’t a fan of a sentence (it just seemed very drawn out for what I perceived as a quick, almost staccato motion), and then the sentence that followed it was absolute gold.
“He winced and a hand reached as though to clear away the stinging, yet though the veteran could not see, not a moment of his focus detached from her growing footsteps.” This is a whole lot of sentence that I somewhat stumbled through.
“Immediately, the woman recoiled at the immense force and her fingers went numb just long enough for her grip to loosen from the hammer, it was flung aside.” Again, I really like the imagery in this sentence, but it’s just a whole lot of sentence.
If you noticed, the majority of your paragraphs (at least on my screen) are four lines long. Then you have a seven, and then you have a five and a two. It might not be something major, but you might want to experiment a little with paragraph sizes. I try (the key word is try) to use stuff like paragraph size and shape to enhance the ebb and flow of a post, and it’s a trick I’d recommend anyone practice.
---
Bandit 1
“A jolt of fear stabbed through the bandit as she marveled at his durability, and her hesitation took a moment too many.” – I liked this little line for the insight it gives into the character. Although outwardly savage, it’s obvious she isn’t completely savage on the inside (although I guess I still have more to read)
“Slowing to a stop, her nose caught the sweet scent of diesel and her attention fell upon her lost sledgehammer.” – I would have yelled at you, had you not made some mention of smells.
“The woman snatched the tape-wrapped haft and slowly stood, not allowing her eyes to leave her opponent, and hefted her trophy weapon up onto her shoulder.” – You guys are both really alike. You both like these large, complex sentences. Sometimes I enjoy them, and then there are other times where they’re just a whole lot of sentence.
Ahhh, she light a cigarette with her giant, fire-breathing hammer. *Shia Labeauf clap*
“The twin shockwaves exploded in almost equal potency, the flaring white of Gildarts’ Parry intertwining with the combusting orange conflagration of Sledge’s Hammer. The forms within seemed nothing more than silhouettes in the light of the eruption before they were each flung in opposite directions.” – Lovely image.
“Careening across the arena, ash trailing her, the bandit slammed into the edge of the stone rampart, a few bricks crumbling down as she spiraled onward.” – I know this is grammatically correct, but I also wound up stumbling through the last segment.
“Scrambling to her feet, the bandit stumbled towards the center of the ring, sky swirling overhead, vision twisting with every step. Staggering along, she couldn’t help but stop, lean on a post, and puke her brains out. As she rested, heaving for breath, she saw the tip of a shoe peeking out from behind a chunk of stone.” – After writing my own fight filled with excessive blood, it was nice to see some vomit. I also appreciated that third comma in that sequence of actions.
---
Gildarts 2
“The cringeworthy crunch of bone and muscle mashed sickeningly together in her ears.” A lot of adverbs in here, but I like the imagery, even if it took me a moment after this sentence to realize this was the Bandit’s perspective.
“Meanwhile, the invisible punch still throbbed at her jaw, there was a never-ending pitch in her ears, and the bandit could only hold her head to steady the damage done.” – Look at that perfect list of items and commas and visual imagery. Good stuff.
“It had been where the hammer and his magic ignited, he now couldn’t feel anything other than the stabbing of spear shrapnel that clung, embedded deep into his inside” - I’m aware that this is certainly grammatically correct, but I’ll be danged if I wouldn’t have just made two separate sentences.
“Specks of crimson rain trailed on the ground, he clenched his side and his face wore an expression of weary torment. Another step delivered him right into the bandit’s crosshairs. He had blown her to the other side of the coliseum! But the distance gave her an advantage, now, she didn’t have to be close to hit him. A greasy smile spread across her bruised lips as she whispered so silently, so surely, “You’re mine.” – I may have read this wrong, but I wasn’t huge on the blending of perspective (or at least that’s how I perceived it). We have Gildarts walking and clutching. Then an exclamatory remark (I like seeing an exclamation point, although it felt weird hidden in the middle of this paragraph). Then we have the bandit sizing up a shot and speaking.
“And she kept firing.” – Lovely use of italics. This and the description of the wounds was brilliant imagery.
“The earth below his feet cackled as his energy was unleashed.” – I don’t know if I like the word cackled here, even if I knew what you were trying to do with it.
“Glowing eyes slanted in malevolent crimson diamonds. The cape flickered behind him, sawing vehemently against the newfound wind.” – Really loved the cape description, but I spent too much time trying to process the first part. I know you were trying to say they were sparkling and red, but I just couldn’t figure out what ‘slanted’ was in the context? Just how the diamonds in this metaphor are sideways (which is what it would take for it too look like eyes?)
“Whether it was intentional, or fully out of the churning fear that grew in her stomach, no one would know, as Gildarts reached for the gun and held it in his hands before applying enough force with his hands to break it in two.” – A lot of sentence
“The weapon, seemingly a pesky annoyance for the magical guy with bullshit powers, was tossed aside after a notable crack could be seen forming in the blackened steel snout.” – I reread this and laughed after recalling bandit’s previous post.
Bandit 2
Gildarts is really channeling his inner Goku. Being all (seemingly) overpowered and all like ‘U weak, give up, yo. Or I beat u up.’
“Her brown eyes locked onto the burning slits in the shadow, her defiant stare refusing to diminish even as he crushed the life out of her. “Heh,” she choked, a bloody grin splitting her mask of paint, “I was kinda hoping you’d ‘force’ me to use this.” – Now I picture Gildarts having like, stereotypical slanty evil eyes.
“I was kinda hoping you’d ‘force’ me to use this.” – I added sarcastic air quotes as I read this. I hope that was the intended effect.
“A blaze split the earth, sputtering red licked out from the cracks of the fissure before a pulse of harnessed horsepower shattered the ground below Gildarts’ feet, blowing his up and away in a swath of fire. /// Gildarts released his opponent as he stumbled backwards over the collapsing earth, quickly regaining his footing in the broad crater that had formed underneath him.” – At first, I read this as Gildarts being hurled up into the air by another explosion. The next sentence led me to believe that it was more so a chunk of the earth shooting up? Either way, I got a little confused.
“The glowing red things that were once his eyes searched the area and found the wily desert-dweller already as far away as one of the tall stone barricades that dotted the battlefield.” – I think I get the metaphor you were going for in your previous post, Sam. Also, now I just see Wil E Coyote. I hope this ends with anvils.
“to the problem of abject horseshit that now persecuted her.” – Ahahahahaahaha
“The ground split as Gildarts trod forward, air crackling with lightning at the very presence of his power. Finding himself before the obstacle, he planted both hands on the wall and a white light shined from within it, a gleaming grid forming over its surface that quickly grew brighter. With a flash, the barricade exploded into a series of tiny hexahedrons, scattering into the air and crumbling before him like so many children’s playthings.” – This is probably my favorite paragraph you’ve wrote thus far.
“A thunderous CLANG rang out as the hammer impacted the weapon” – More curious than anything why you didn’t decide to italicize the onomatopoeia
…Jesus, she lost her arm. And here I was two posts ago remarking about not seeing much blood. lol
---
Gildarts 3
I am curious if the arm thing was something Frisco ran passed you or just threw on your lap. Gildarts is obviously not a dude to go ripping or hacking off limbs, so I can imagine it could have been planned as a curveball.
Nah, scratch that. Gildarts’ like ‘WHATEVER YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF.’
“He could still feel the distant tingle of his fingertips, and now, she would be like him. He had overestimated himself then, and today, he had overestimated her.” – This sentence is a veritable sea of pronouns, but I still love it.
“Air splashed into her lungs, but not fast enough. Bandit howled as her other, gravel-caked hand met the warm, juicy blood that poured from her bicep. Her blood-chilling caterwaul quickly filled the arena, prickling even the villains in the audience who had half a heart. Dry gulps forced down her throat in a vain attempt to swallow the profound pain. She could not set aside the endless inferno of her suffering, and she was drowning in it.” – And this is the best paragraph YOU have written in this fight thus far. Holy crap.
“Their skin became pale and flushed; both had lost blood, both seemed to have been hit with the savage blow of unearthly revelation, and both seemed to be standing on their last leg, each of their endurance trickling where it had once flowed in the whirling streams of combat.” – A lovely (grammatically correct) sentence, although part of me feels like it could have ended after leg.
“Salty sweat” – I know you love images and want to plug in some notion of the various senses, but I did kind of chuckle at this, because I’ve never known sweat to be anything but salty. I did like the part that followed.
As my students would say after reading the part where Gildarts tears off his own (fake) arm: “That ***** savage!”
---
Bandit 3
Your use of such lovely dialogue makes me yearn for a type of ‘fuck you, fuck YOU, fuck all of you’ type of character that can just shout things like ‘You limbless fuck’ and it is completely in line with who she or he is. Oh and then it gets followed with her getting cold-cocked in the face.
You guys have such fun vocabularies. I’m pretty sure no other fight would have used the word caterwaul not once, but twice.
What a cool exchange. To have them just so viciously try and destroy one another to them just like, agreeing not to go the entire way and murder-kill. Really liked it.
Even though I knew you wrote it, I still chuckled at the ‘Stop Hitting Yourself’ line
Also a very fabulous close. People always yearn to have the very first post, but I’m a fan of having the last post… especially when you can end on such a powerful note.[/spoiler]
Score Card
I apologize, as I’m sure that many of the categories may have bled over in my head.
Gildarts
"Description and Clarity:
3 – I really like your work, and I think you do a very great job at scene-crafting. I do think there’s still room for improvement in this area. You like a lot of metaphors/similies and creating very vivid imagery. But for me (and I hope I highlighted enough examples above), it was a little hit-and-miss at times. Pick your moments. Overall above average compared to our peers, though.
Voice:
3 – My main thing here is to work on your pacing. By that I mean, mix it up. I’m going to probably repeat this same thing on Bandit’s card, but I felt like I was reading ‘Duel of the Long, Flowery (and yes, well-written) Sentences.’ There’s nothing wrong with that, because the writing was solid, but personally I’m someone who likes to see shifts and breaks. You had some of them, but they were drowned out among the other stuff. Experiment. Play around with paragraph breaks and paragraph sizes.
Character:
3 – Gildarts is pretty beastly. He’s like a giant magic rock in a sea of silliness, whether that’s in DA or in this fight. My issue is that… it kind of felt like he was just soldiering through events. Bandit became this rabid machine of a woman as the fight wore on, but aside from when he went full-on Broly ‘Power Level Maximum,’ I had a hard time connecting with Gildarts. You did a good job of capturing his injuries in that final post, but while you described it very well, I didn’t really feel with him. I mean, the dude was clearly well enough (or loco enough, maybe?) to tear off his own arm.
Story:
2.5 - You do a great job of progressing the story, matching the escalating violence with even more violence. I do, however, think you may have taken the short-end of the stick with a few of the story progressions. It felt like, on many occasions, you were reacting to the fallout from bandit posts, and in the cases where you could have spun the momentum your way (like Gildarts de-arming himself), you placed that near the end of your post, where bandit grabbed the ball and ran with it. Another interesting thing is that the majority of the dialogue you wrote was for the other character. Part of this might be that bandit is chattier than Gildarts but still. This isn’t to say that you didn’t craft a nice story, but to me, it felt like you were the junior partner.
Grammar and Spelling:
3.5 – You have no typos, but I’d keep an eye on commas. Just because word or google drive says you don’t need one doesn’t mean you don’t need one (I made that sentence grammar poor on purpose, because I’m a funny guy). Otherwise you have better control over this category than many members.
Total = 15
Bandit
"Description and Clarity:
3 – Solid. I did kind of fumble through a few of the set-pieces, because I have a tendency to read things out loud and verbatim. So I tend to stagger to the end of very long sentences. In terms of the description, you were solid. All the bloodshed and the detail of the various magical spells worked (oddly) somewhat more in your favor than the person actually using them.
Voice:
3 – This might be cheap, but I want to give you the same ‘advice’ I gave Gildarts. Try to experiment a little with how you structure sentences and paragraphs. You have a little more of that than she does, but I definitely think it’s something you could try and experiment with in the future.
Character:
3 – I have very little to go off of, but I still don’t feel like I’ve grasped the bandit. Don’t get me wrong, I like her and I like what I’m reading. But I’m still trying to process whether or not she’s some sort of sociopath or something else. Bear in mind, this fight is my sample size (plus the short conversations on the topic we’ve had on skype). I was kind of amused at the juxtaposition between being cordial and almost knightly and the grotesque violence that bookended the exchange in the final post. In a weird way, it will hook me in the long-term, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about bandit. I don’t hate her, but it’s not like I have any reason to like her.
Story:
4 – I stated this in Gildart’s scorecard, but I felt like you (your writing) controlled much of the tempo of this fight (and thus, the story). Aside from having to cope with the Tier 2, I felt like your posts directed much of the action. Even when bandit wasn’t being written by you, it still felt like she was in control of the story. On top of that, I felt like bandit’s ‘arc’ was the more compelling of the two, even if I’m conflicted and confused about her character (for now, I’m sure). How would anyone in that audience not want to cheer for that woman?
Grammar and Spelling:
4 – Solid. I think I maybe caught a handful of moments where punctuation was weird, but at the end of the day I’m not comfortable enough with my own editorial skills to give you a 5, as I’m sure a professional editor would have a keener eye than me. I hope that’s understandable.
Total = 17
Winner is Bandit with No Name