Well hello there.
Arun:
508/558 - Perdition//Revelations [2786]
I'm gonna get straight into it and give you my frank thoughts on the whole thread, as well as your individual role in it.
From the get-go you struggle to make a consistent image of the dragon. I was never terribly sure of what exactly it looked like, how large it was, how much damage it was causing just by existing. I didn't have the benefit of reading Apostasy//Evocation prior to this, so it would've probably been for the best if you'd redone a concise description of it over the first few rounds.
Once things are truly underway, it clears up a bit, but I still feel as though you had trouble separating different actions and targets with the dragon's focus. A couple of area-of-effect attacks didn't seem very well-conveyed for needing to cover so much ground, and direct attacks didn't really explicitly state their targets or intentions. In any given combat, clarity is the name of the game. The Lightning Cannon attack on Deni is a good example of the dragon not only being proactive in its attacks, but also being very direct and clear on what it's doing. Conversely, the Infurnus attack and how it was divvied up amongst targets wasn't as clear, and you even had to include a note on who was being hit by what.
Try to make sure you're stating, in the narrative, who is being hit by any given attack, and what with. The more information a reader has to work with, the better they can envision the threat of it, and the necessity of a response.
Moving on from that, I enjoyed the dragon covering distance in some rounds, but I can't help but feel you dropped the mechanic too early, and didn't cover nearly enough distance to make it seem threatening. I guess that comes down to the meat of the problem I could see you having throughout though: the dragon struggles very frequently to be proactive. It causes some collateral damage and throws out a lot of reactionary attacks at the people trying to stop it, but doesn't really seem to go after them until it's already starting to lose momentum.
You managed to make it seem threatening in spite of this, thankfully, and the handling of it casting Bellator spells was creative and well-portrayed. It's the kind of ingenuity I count on from you, and hopefully I'll get to see more of it with the rest of the Black Portal plotline.
Overall, the thread is unfortunately inconsistent. It's very easy to tell that you and the other writers weren't on the same page, and without a clear image of the dragon's appearance or scale in the thread, the struggles of the fighters doesn't come across very well. The mixed signals each writer was putting off on its threat level didn't help either, but a good deal of that is simply characterization on the writer's part. It might've benefited each of you to have a frank conversation on how dangerous the dragon was meant to be, and that individual efforts would've been trumped by a group one - even if it would've meant some narrative gymnastics to justify the characters all cooperating under the circumstances.
If you wanted to know anything else about the thread, feel free to message me.
Val: + 50 Faction
670/700 - Perdition//Revelations [3496]
So I think you should read the last paragraph of what I wrote up for Arun's grades because they apply to the thread as a whole, but I'm gonna get right into what your role in the thread was and how you contributed.
Overall, Deni was perhaps one of the three consistent presences in the thread. I found his usual characterization great, but I do feel that you and Dys went too out of your way to push the whole "Deni and Ignis are an item" narrative. This might've been a great opportunity to show their trust in one another in a bad situation, but instead we got quite a few rounds of the two constantly worrying and a reasonably cringe-worthy rage-mode from Ignis.
I don't know that the persistent targeting of the skull, even after it was closed, was in-character for Deni, but I trust you to know what he would do in those situations. It was odd that you kept chipping at the armor instead of finding ways to expose the weak point - it made your turns come out a bit staler for it, seeing as you were just repeating the same actions with different reactions from Arun's turns.
What you might've benefited from was having a more take-charge role OOG. The inconsistency in everyone's actions and focuses and narratives was the big drawback on this thread, and I feel as though giving Arun another person in his corner keeping things on the level and everyone on the same page would've helped immensely. I consider you and Dys both veterans of this by now; I enjoy your writing and you two are of the more upstanding (boy isn't that ironic coming from me) members of the RP.
Overall, I'm afraid there's not much to say here on account of how samey you made your actions throughout the thread. Things picked up nicely towards the end as both Deni and Ignis started to run out of gas and their injuries started to accumulate, and I appreciate the effort both of you put into making the dragon a very real threat.
Guest Grader: Will:
Didn't see nothing, boss.
