Hey Darlings. So as an overall note, I should be on a bit more regularly come Thursday. With hubby going back to NJ, I'll be a lot more lonely, haha. So I'll be looking for HD writing to distract me. Anyhoo, PMs are running toward the end... Let's finish up strong.
Katie – 53 + 75 Div
I like Natalie a lot. There wasn’t much that fleshed her out in this chapter, but her elusivness was intriguing. I like how she could multitask her job and her concerns about the ring. That alone says that she’s a smart and focused woman. To be perfectly honest, I’d love it if she could meet Videl some day. Nicely done.
Geronimo – 53/53
Vent – 95 + 75 Div
A pleasure writing with you. I love Jamie, and since I rarely see you anymore, I’m slightly terrified that you’re going to make me fall in love with this character, and then disappear. So... don’t go? Kthnx. Anyway, as for the collab... I really enjoyed Lilith’s and Jamie’s back and forth. The two of them are so snarky with each other that every turn was exciting for me to write. I apologize that getting turns took forever from me, but I appreciate your patience and positive attitude.
Also, I need to applaud you for creating a very believable and complicated backstory for Jamie. I know I had given you some opportunity to think about it beforehand, but there were still a few curveballs in there, and none of them threw you off. Really awesome job.
An Appropriate... Punishment – 95/95
Thread - 19
Wish you had written more here... But I can't really complain since I dropped off the side of the planet during this collab too. Nonetheless, it was good to see Hisoka make it out to the other side.
Walled In - 19/19
Hare - 240
Geez, Hare... You and Rob really know how to write things that require lots of commentary...
I was actually really impressed by the amount of fluidity in your collabs this week. Hare and Nana both have rather... blunt... personalities. It’s that sort of honesty that both resonates with the characters’ levels of integrity, but at the same time, can be somewhat off-putting in conversations. However, because of this, it allowed Hare and Nana to transition rather seamlessly in conversation. There was a level of compatibility and comfort that doesn’t usually appear when either of those characters interact with others. Where another character would be turned off or struck silent by a plausibly awkward situation, Hare and Nana met one another with a cool, relaxed, familiar yet equally professional dynamic.
For Building Blocks, I’m impressed by how you were able to discuss so many different things. You did well here with the shifts from becoming a captain, division concerns, family life, hair color, and Idaten. I’m still not crazy about how Nana shut down Hare’s ‘discovery’ of the technique. After all, Hare did discover it. He may not have been alive 500 years ago to discover it before Nana, but he did find it on his own terms.
Still trailing on the subject of ‘discovery,’ this whole idea that Nana was bff’s with Hare’s ancestor and the Uchiharus were a study group for the Gotei as a go-to... Honestly, I think it seems illogical. And it was shortly after Ebisu was introduced that my feelings toward the collab started to shift. Hare was from a very high-numbered district of Rukongai – the dumps, the ghetto. He grew up getting beaten up every day. And out of trillions and trillions of people, he makes the extraordinary accomplishment of becoming a captain. And then – bam. Curveball. – now out of those trillions of trillions of people, he’s also from the Gotei's go-to study group? Also, let me say that from a genetics perspective, this also seems absurd. I won’t go into Lamarck’s theory of evolution... but let’s say that this sounds a lot like that. I generally tend to love your arcs, but sadly, this is not one of my favorites.
Breaching Heaven was also quite interesting. I’m a bit confused though. Izanami was described as “returned from the very depths of the underworld itself to reclaim what she had lost so long ago.” Is she already dead or no? If she’s already dead, I have several important notes in the following paragraph. If she’s not – and this was simply a metaphorical description – then you can ignore the next two paragraphs and read, “Really well-written. I liked this one and all it’s creepy, scary intensity, and I'm excited to see what will happen now that Tsukiyomi is brought back.”
Okay... soo assuming Izanami is dead... I think we should note something important here, which, honestly, I even sometimes overlook. Death gods are already ghosts. So really, ghosts having ghosts gets more than a little repetitive. When I created the mystics, I specifically defined that any departed spirit is a collection of reiatsu and a collection of fragments of other dead souls. Thus any individual ghost is really just a defined conglomeration of hundreds of spiritual entities. It is incredibly rare and difficult for a single spirit to become one whole being – or even become the dominant being – in a defined collection of spirits. Unless, of course, this is a GM-approved return like what we saw with Vincent. I do, however, suggest that the inability to concentrate a single spirit into one being is part of the reason why Tsukiyomi can't 'really' come back.
Okay, with that said, I think this is all stuff you and Rob need to consider when you guys go on your creative spurs. I admire you both so much for your ability to create these creative situations, but make sure that you stay true to the universe you’re writing in. It’s cool and artistic to color outside the lines from time to time, but remember, those lines are still there for a reason -- to bring life to the framework that the HD world has already prepared. But otherwise, if you color too far outside the lines, you might as well just draw on a blank slate and write something else outside of the HD world.
Building Blocks - 184/189
Breaching Heaven - 56/56
Mah stuffz for Hiren, I think?
http://www.mangaden.net/forum/showthread.php?36582-10th-10th-Week-240-An-Appropriate-Punishment
http://www.mangaden.net/forum/showthread.php?36536-PM-Open-Week-240-Walled-In
(I didn't have much time to write for
Walled In, so Rob took over for me mid-way)
