Grundy vs.Colonel OOC

[Sans]

Judging Time!

Before I start, I must say that I thought the fight was a good one for the most part. The only real problem I managed to have with the entire thing (as in, the whole fight) was that I never felt like there was a reason explained as to why they are both fighting. Colonel kinda hand-waved it in the first post, but I think setting up the reason either within an intro post or even within one of your fight posts would have helped the entire thing make more sense. As such, it was a missed opportunity.

Anyways, that's all I really wanted to say about the fight. No one missed any deadlines, so no need to put penalties. Damage will be countered below the judging results, so here we go starting with:

Solomon Grundy

Description and Clarity: 1.5

As this is your first time writing a fight post, it's to be expected. Plenty of the problems I had with your descriptions were the same ones I had when I fought my first time too. Just takes practice.

One of the first things I noticed is that you have a tendency to repeat your words CONSTANTLY! Your first post is the worst offender of this, with words like "zombie" being used more than six times in the first post alone. To aid in this, I recommend reading other character's posts on this site that are known for their excellent descriptions (People like Okor, Sinestro, and Nealapph are great examples.) as well as using a good thesaurus to broaden your word usage. My personal favorite is <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/thesaurus/">http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/thesaurus/</a><!-- m -->, and I also suggest you use it when you write.

Thankfully, your descriptions improved by the second and third post, and part of the reason this isn't a straight up 1 is thanks to some decent ones like the following:

Colonel sailed straight up into the air, turning ever so gently at the apex of his climb. The robot flailed desperately as he tried to right himself, or at least avoid the inevitable follow up to Grundy's skyward sling. And then he began to fall down...gaining velocity as he reapproached the ground. Grundy stood there, waiting...breathing heavily, watching his opponent sink like a stone. His fists, clasped together.
"NOW GRUNDY CRUSH!"

He tilted his neck to the side and wound up, swinging just as Colonel was a few feet from the ground.

CRACK

I like this one thanks to how its paced and how it ends, with good use of onomatopoeia and something that genuinely had me nodding and saying "That was pretty good." as soon as I saw it. In fact, if there is one thing I think you do undeniably well in, it's anything revolving around onomatopoeia. I heavily suggest taking advantage of that skill in the future.

Now, even though the word repetition did lessen by the second and third post, it was still prevalent. The second thing I also noticed was that, overall, the word choice is merely okay. A lot of the way things were described made an otherwise action-fueled scene somewhat bland. This is, again, due to word choice as well as one more thing: sentence structure, which will be covered more in the Technical grade. For now, let's focus on word choice. The best way to solve it is a good thesaurus and a good dictionary. Whenever you can, look up words on a thesaurus and put them into the dictionary, using whatever ones make the most sense in the context of the situation. Be careful, though! Using too fanciful words is almost as bad as using dull and uninteresting ones. Description is a tricky thing to balance (I still have issues with it myself) but it is worth it once you get the hang of it.

As an example from your first post again, here is this section of it:

The hulking zombie charged, bellowing and gnashing his broken teeth. Colonel clenched his own jaw and deactivated his glowing sword, charging up the dissipated energy into a glowing green blast of energy. The soldier program managed to get off about three shots in the time it took Grundy to cover the distance between them, two of them hitting their target in the shoulder and chest with the third missing by an inch. A huge, dead hand swung towards the zombie's opponent, almost in slow motion, and impacted with a heavy slap. Colonel let out a grunt of exertion as he slowed the open handed slap with his free hand and fired up his blade once more, just as a tree trunk thick forearm hit him right in the sternum and drove him backwards into the air. Both the zombie and the robot sailed clear over the river's depths, the Navi born along on Grundy's fist by his velocity. As the zombie landed on his boots, he swung his arm around, hoping to find purchase on one of those metal limbs. He felt the green energy blade sink into his back and shoulder, but by this point it was like cutting a steak with a toothpick. Gripping his opponent by the leg in his banana fingered fist, he held him up and roared again before slamming the soldier Navi into the ground and following with a slow, heavy kick that just missed as Colonel managed to use the momentum from his slam to roll away.

This is my rewritten version of that post:

The gargantuan behemoth charged, bellowing and gnashing his broken teeth. Colonel clenched his own jaw and deactivated his glowing sword, taking a step back and leaning forward, charging up his dissipated energy into a glowing green blast of energy. The soldier program managed to get off about three shots in the time it took Grundy to cover the distance between them, two of them hitting their target in the shoulder and chest with the third missing by an inch. A huge, dead hand swung towards the undead's opponent, impacting the robot with a heavy slap. Colonel let out a grunt of exertion as he brought his hand up to meet the tree trunk thick forearm, slowing it down as he reactivated his blade. All of a sudden, the gigantic brute raised his meaty, vine-covered limb once more, smashing him right in the sternum and driving him backwards into the air.

Both the zombie and the robot sailed clear over the river's depths, the Navi brought along on Grundy's fist clamped around his metallic endoskeleton. As Grundy landed on his boots, he whirled around, his beefy mitts ready to find purchase on one of the long, metallic limbs of his assailant. Suddenly, he felt something burning hot sink into his back and shoulder, but by this point it was like cutting a steak with a toothpick. He snapped his hand towards the Navi's leg, grasping it tightly and providing a good sized dent in its armor. He lifted him up into the air, hanging the soldier upside down. He twisted him around until their faces nearly touched; the soldier's was completely stoic and calculated, while the beast was gritting his teeth and snarling. The swamp monster roared, providing no real reaction from his attacker as he abruptly slammed him into the ground. The robot's frame started sparking, cracks surrounding where he had landed as Grundy reared his leg back, about to kick forward. Before he could, Colonel hopped towards the corpse's right, feeling a gust of wind sail past his back as he rolled out of the way.

Not perfect, imho, but I think this is something you can strive for. The other problem your descriptions have is that they usually have FAR too much stuff going on within them, which ruins the pacing. If needed, separate your sentences to decrease their length and so you can REALLY show me your writing chops.

As for clarity, I didn't get TOO confused as to what was happening, but there were several arts throughout that just left me wondering what exactly was going on. Be sure to double check, or triple check, your posts to make sure they are understandable.

Voice: 2

I like to think that, for the most part, Voice is made up of the usage of literary techniques, pacing, and the overall tone of the writing itself.

There wasn't really much that I found wrong with the voice itself except for one thing: pacing. Again, the first post REALLY hurt you in terms of your scores. Most, if not all, of your sentences in that first post had TOO much stuff going on in it that was being told WAY too fast. You can look back up towards the section I pulled from it to see where. For pacing, try to cut your sentences up, which allows the pace of the action and story from being too fast while also keeping it from being too slow.

Thankfully, I found that the overall tone and the literary techniques used in the entire fight were well implemented, though there weren't a lot of them. Let me list my favorites.

-fwwwweeeeeEEEEEEEEEEE-

KABOOM

THWAK. THWAK. THWAK.

Colonel sailed straight up into the air, turning ever so gently at the apex of his climb. The robot flailed desperately as he tried to right himself, or at least avoid the inevitable follow up to Grundy's skyward sling. And then he began to fall down...gaining velocity as he reapproached the ground. Grundy stood there, waiting...breathing heavily, watching his opponent sink like a stone. His fists, clasped together.
"NOW GRUNDY CRUSH!"

He tilted his neck to the side and wound up, swinging just as Colonel was a few feet from the ground.

CRACK

Again, I like your usage of onomatopoeia. It really did serve to help establish the more chaotic tone the writing had, which also served to contrast the more professional tone set up by Colonel, which I also liked. There were also some metaphors placed here and there that were pretty good.

In short, work on your pacing, and take advantage of the techniques you are good with. They can EASILY become a defining aspect of your writing.

Character: 3

Without knowing anything about who Grundy was before the fight, I came out of it figuring he was an impulsive, easily-angered, undead corpse who is so determined that he won't stop until his opponent is dead. And he isn't very intelligent.

With this in mind, there wasn't anything in the fight I thought was out of character for him, and I don't have an issue with how he was presented. I also liked his dialogue, as it fit his character well too.

What I think COULD'VE improved, however, was the motivations for why he was fighting, as well as other, more complex things like that. This goes for both you and Colonel, as I never ONCE figured out why exactly you guys were suddenly wanting to kill each other. Again, I felt like this was a wasted opportunity on BOTH sides, and something that everyone should take advantage.

Also, I felt like the dialogue you used for Colonel felt a bit... strained, I suppose. Could need work on it.

Story: 2.5

It was okay. Nothing blew me away except for one or two parts in the works, which boosted your score, but other than that, it was just an average fight. I think this suffered because, again, no motivations were given as to why both of you decided to start trying to kill each other.

However, I DID like the end of the first post, which described Grundy stabbing himself in his chest further to elbow drop Colonel. I will admit, this impressed me. It shows that you can easily make something cool out of a potentially lethal wound, and that you can be flexible as a writer. I also know you can have a sense of pacing, judging from the end of your second post, which I also enjoyed. Just be sure to remember to make each sentence only as long as it needs to be, and always try to make each story as interesting and as compelling as possible.

Technical: 2

We've more or less already covered this. The main issue I have with it is that some of the sentences get dragged on for far too long, resulting in details getting crammed into one sentence where it would be better to separate them. Be sure to cut sentences to prevent this.

Aside from that, there were some misspelled words and other errors. Always double check, and I also suggest writing into something like Open Office or Microsoft Word, as those can often catch errors quickly.

Grundy's Score: 11

Colonel's Judge Time will be posted the first chance I get to it.