Grading Session for Week 26

[Redfin]

The grading groups and their graders are currently as follows:

[Ca] Castus - Raph

Cheese
Freckles
Lambo
Nella
Tetsu​

[Oc] Occultus - Finny

Bob
Moon
Shade
Sparx
Thread
Zerieth​

[Be] Bellator - Will

Berri
Bish
Dys
Kaze
Rob​

[Se] Serpens - Hiren

Bunz
Doc
Loko
Minj
Puppet
Regulus​

[Aq] Aquila - Sev

Dil
Resh
Thana
Val
Vin
Hare​

The Rotation for the month of February 2015 is:

[Ca] -> [Be] -> [Se] -> [Oc] -> [Aq] -> [Ca]​

Please post your thread titles beginning with your grading group, then the week number, like follows:

[Ca] Week 01: Let It Begin, Let It Begin​

Grades are due by 11:59 PM EST on Tuesday, 02/10/15.

 

[Redfin]

Pls, Sparx, pls.

Moon
Out of the Frying Pan: 92 * 2 = 184
All the interesting stuff seems to be happening over there, getting to schmooze with the wanted criminals of the ANO. Well, this collab was mostly to establish that organization, with the occasional Aeria thought and interjection. Let's see how you do on the next part. Should be fun.

---

Shade + 75 bouns
Waiting: 103
This is a well-put together chapter. It has nice flow, a mixture of descriptions and actions, some back-and-forth character introduction that showed them off as well as something sinister. The chapter is tantalizing. That's what it is.

 

[swaswj]

Writing tagged with [Plot] in week 017 and onward will count for twice the normal point value.

Berri - 000/000

Don't see anything this week.​

Bish - 000/000

Don't see anything this week.​

Dys - 265/270 + 100 Faction

I really don't have much to say about your part in the PM thread. I would love to see more direction from Ignis, more of her influencing others. So far, she pretty much follows everyone else's lead, and that feels contrary to the character arc with Harper where she was perhaps getting fooled a little, but generally took the lead and pushed him toward her goal.

It's good that you're writing pretty regularly, but I'd like to see some of that development blossom in her character.

+100 Faction

PM: Out of the Frying Pan (1350) 265/270​

Kaze - 000/000

Don't see anything this week.​

Rob - 106/109 + 11 Consec

Caught one typo ('thought' instead of 'taught'), but this chapter on the whole feels much more complete and polished than the last pieces I read from you. That's why it leads to disappointment again when the chapter cuts off abruptly. I know there's consec bonus involved, and I will absolutely support the exercise of writing a little every week to keep yourself from growing lax. However, it is very possible to tell a complete (but brief) story in 1000 words.

You don't spend time discussing what happened in previous installments (and it would be a waste of words to do so if you hover around 1000 words per chapter) so it only makes sense to keep moving the story forward. I grow tired of these awkward pauses where another character talks or thinks about how important your main characters are. Rosa has a story: tell it. Echo has a story, Sigrid has a story, and they're all shaping up to be interesting ones. Tell us those stories. There's no need to stall with tiny snippets and unneeded outside introspection.

Another Day (1090) 106/109​

Hiren - 270/274

This was a pleasant break from the norm. I certainly did not expect to see Urias defending someone in court, particularly someone he had never met or spoken with before the trial. It's nonsensical but refreshing, and brightened up by the detail you added into the creation and description of the court.

There's an odd tendency to emphasize phrases and words that seem out of place, though. At several points, your dialogue had odd transitions. The ones that stood out were "exasperated Sarah" and "replied quite chipper."

As regards the story itself, I enjoyed the humor and I am curious about the outcome, but I don't actually feel an investment in that outcome. So far, the defendant hasn't expressed any redeeming quality or demeanor. Since it's fresh in my mind, due to the recent announcement, I'm reminded of the court scene in To Kill A Mockingbird where we really hear very little from the defendant but instead are given a picture of him through the way he carries himself, through descriptions of what he does for a living. All we know about Peter is that he drinks and chops firewood -- and possibly young women.

I'm curious whether he's the killer, but I'm not at all invested in the life or death of Peter Wiggley.

Snatch and Grab I (2735) 270/274​

My Writing:

2,854 - Week 026 - Out of the Frying Pan (Open) [Plot]​

 

[Nargles]

Minja

Out of the Frying Pan [274/335] PM Bonus Included

Typos man. Most of it was spacing. Pretty much all of your turns had messed up paragraph spacing and I know I've mentioned this a million times. I've taken off 15% solely because I've brought this up almost weekly. This is not a hard problem to fix, just look at your turn after pressing 'submit'.

Outside of that at least Aelflead kept in character. I do have to call into question some of the... leaps in logic that she made that seemed to bleed in out of game information. Like, what on earth made her think that ANO had anything to say about spurii? She seemed to be completely chill with assassinating more people, which really says a lot about her decision making prowess. Oh well, at least it was consistent with how she tends to act, though I have a feeling it's going to be an issue eventually and will probably come back to bite her.

Back at Home [150/157]

Well this fills one plot hole of what the hell Gwen was doing during all this PM stuff. There's this weird tendency in your writing to arbitrarily repeat words more than people actually do. I'm mainly talking about the "Crap, Crap, Crap, Crap, Crap, Damnit!" part. It just kind of came out of nowhere, wasn't in italics or quotes so I guess it was supposed to be part of the description? Also, aside from the fact that the capitalization was all unnecessary, my main point is that it didn't really seem to add anything to the piece. There's a lot of awkward phrases, repeating of what occurred a sentence before that just makes the chapter seem really bloated at points. If a sentence isn't moving the piece or enhancing the experience for the reader, it probably can be removed to streamline reading. Keep that in mind when you continue writing.

 

[OssumBunz]

Hare- 107/107

“Sweet and Sour”
Hmmm it doesn't even feel like I’ve missed any of your writing, by the way your descriptions feel a lot better here than they have in other chapters. Your character interactions and dialogue were also exceptionally good here, the whole chapter was a nice read and it didnt hit a dull point at all imo. Kincaid is quite interesting with his alias and all, I feel going this route has made him a better read than if you hadnt gone this route. Good work.

Val- 302/302

“Out of the Frying Pan”
Your writing quality is pretty high, I didnt see any mistakes and you seem to have a good good balance of elements and flow going. I’m surprised at how Deni seems to have changed or grown rather since you proposed the idea of the character, but I’m also surprised that he seems to have decided to follow ANO. If this works for his character, then so be it, I honestly havent read enough of your writing to tell for sure. Oh and thanks for adding up your words.


Resh- 336/336

“Out of the Frying Pan”
So many people running with ANO now, last I checked...werent they terrorists? Well anyhoo your writing wasn’t too bad, but I feel that you use too much inner dialogue. We’ve all used inner dialogue in the past and perhaps even more than there was here. However I feel it is a crutch for getting across how your character feels and what they think. There are other, more creative ways of getting this across than to just having the character tell the audience upfront, and you’ll most likely get more words turned out by exploring my subtle methods. Also thank you for adding up your word count.

 

[K3]

Frecks:

120/120 - Out of the Frying Pan [600]

A shame we didn't get to see more of Hal's perspective on things in this. Also: you okay? Haven't heard from you in a while. Contact us if you get a chance.

What little you posted shows Hal's perceptive nature well, and does add an early tinge of conflict between the escapees and their would-be rescuers.​

Guest Grader: Will:

555/570 - Out of the Frying Pan [2854]

So I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about something you tend to do a lot: most times well, other times not so much. Before we get to that, let's talk about the content by-and-large. You do a good job of providing a human (heh) element to ANO with this, but it falls a bit flat trying to do so with a guy that just finished murdering four people. Mor comes across as far more sympathetic, however, and you do a fantastic job of characterizing her in a short amount of time. The other ANO members all come across as very fleshed out and real, but this is where we get to it:

It's been a long-standing thing that when you run threads, chapturns are bound to follow. You write a large amount of characters, all interacting with each other and other player-characters, and often-times they're needed simply to get the necessary information out without seeming rushed. In this thread, however, I feel as though you were almost smothering the player-characters with your own motley crew.

Between Rapax, Mor, Amgine, Aureax, and Orator, you not only matched but exceeded a lot of the other characters. I can understand and empathize with the need to get things going, but this many characters felt both unneeded and served to cement your dominant presence in the thread. I would definitely suggest rereading old threads you ran like Stepping into the Future, or any of the taishuu where you used the OnKi Gundanchou. The quality of the work is to your usual standard of 'great' but it outshines the other writers here to the nth degree.​