Grading Session for Week 269

[swaswj]

Group 3 -> Group 1 -> Group 2 -> Group 4 -> Group 5 -> Group 3




Group 1 (Will): 1st/5th/7th Divisions
Group 2 (Lil): 10th/8th Divisions
Group 3 (Rob): 3rd/12th Divisions
Group 4 (Wayne): 4th/9th/11th Divisions
Group 5 (Hiren): AHs/Vizards/Quincies​

Grades are due March 26, 2013 @ 11:59 PM EST​

 

[swaswj]

It doesn't seem like there's much to grade this week. Since I don't see anything from Lil, I'm going to assume Katie is grading.

Hare - 52/56

Talk with me when you have a chance. The collab here was interesting, but I do think there is a bit too much zeal in implying that nobles are all about assassination all day, all the time. A political assassination would be a very rare occurrence, and would need to entail serious returns for the risk. I could pass this off as Feng's own paranoia, in this case, but honestly, if you crossed another noble, the most likely result would be them putting you out of business, or attempting it.

Mechanically, your parts were pretty solid, with only a few misused words or typos. Shades' turns had more, though.

+150 Div for being the only person to write

A Path of Knives (2250) 52/56​

Katie - 105/112

The Prism Angels chapter really shows its rush. There are spots where there are words missing, typos, and even at least one spot where I think you changed your thought mid-sentence. This came off as a low-effort parody of an action scene, which is what you were going for, but I'd like to encourage you to do a little more with this. I used to use Sayis-as-writer chapters to explore some different styles or themes from my usual work, not as a quick consec-grab. Take advantage of the freedom it offers!

The collab with Vin went really well, I thought, and that's kind of sad, I think. You're a little too used to treading these lines of self-loathing! Alexia and Adelaide both seemed to play their parts well, with Alexia pretty lost, not sure what to do, but still trying to do something... while Adelaide used her to vent and pretty much refused to acknowledge anything she said. The sharp jab at Alexia's guilt was harsh but also pretty real. Nicely done, if dark.

Prism Angels (1016) 45/51
A Single Mistake (2436) 60/61

​

My Writing:

5532 - Week 269: My Skills Bring All the Girls to the Yard

 

[Rob]

Ohey, Beaks, Sene if you guys wrote anything last week please let me know. Mits, your grade will come a bit later.

Guest Grader Will – 135 + 50 Division Bonus

So, not your best work, I’m afraid, but that’s okay. Everyone has their off-days, some just have fewer of them than others. I think that’s the reason why this collaboration really stood out like that. The errors you made seemed so silly for someone like yourself, little descriptive errors like Alexia being a blonde, while she’s... not? And misplacing dialogue quotations where they weren’t at the end of the dialogue sentence, but at the beginning of the follow up.

At one point there were also two paragraphs jammed onto one another, and it just read weird.

Content wise, though, it was good. As I’ve come to expect from you, you know how to keep things fresh and interesting to read – making those small errors less noticeable, but unfortunately still there.

Kyu knows what she’s talking about, and it really shows in the way she behaves and holds herself in a battle. However, there is one little critique I want to give you and that is that you write two extreme opposite characters and it really, really shows.

Sayis, no matter when or how you catch him, tends to be the single most calm person in the entire RP. Kyu, on the other hand, is the extreme opposite. A bit too extreme in my honest opinion, especially coupled with the Mitsu trope.

Whenever her mind is not occupied with something else, Kyu is a creep. And I’m not sure it’s the good one. At certain points in your writing I even feel like she’s one day going to end up yandering the hell out of Mitsu (which, mind you would make for a very interesting read, but that aside).

Everything that has even a little bit to do with Mitsu is overplayed so much that it gets, I’m sorry to say this, painful to read at times. I have always loved your writing, and then especially the Kyu writing you sometimes did. She’s such a nice change of pace from Sayis what with her having trouble with certain, difficult words and her upbeat persona being so vastly different from the, sometimes, overly serious Sayis.

All the more reason why it just feels like such a shame to me that everything she does seems to be dictated by ‘Mitsu this,’ ‘Mitsu that,’ ‘Mitsu such,’ ‘Mitsu so.’

Whereas before I thought Kyu was the single most fleshed out NPC in the entire RP, it now feels like much of those great qualities become lost in her quest to stalk Mitsu twenty-four seven. There comes a point in time where too much actually becomes too much in writing, and for me this is certainly it with your Kyu writing.

At any rate, apart from those three little mistakes your writing was solid as per usual.

Mits - 53 + 100 Division Bonus

So, that first line gave me a good laugh and that’s always nice for a reader. Anyway, onto more technical stuff, there are still quite a few errors in your writing that, while they may seem small, actually detract rather heavily from the flow of your writing.

An example:

Now, that the moon was high in the sky, both of them lay down on the picnic blanket and looked into the starry night.

On first glance this sentence seems to look okay, no spelling errors and it makes kind of sense. However! There is a random comma floating around just after ‘Now’ which makes it seem like ‘Now’ and the moon being high in the sky are part of two separate things. They’re not. Because what happens after ‘Now’ is because of the moon being so high, so they are conjoined.

As a result, that comma needs to go. The second comma is correct, and the rest of the sentence as well.

Commas after the first word in a sentence is generally only used for words like: ‘However,’ and ‘But,’ or, ‘Moreover,’ or, ‘Though,’ etc. Or as you so aptly used in the direct sentence that followed, ‘Still’.

Another one:

He kissed her, before he continued

In this case ‘before’ can actually be seen as the comma in this particular sentence. “He kissed her before he continued”. You wouldn’t use a comma in this case. You would, however, use a comma when you write something along the lines of:

He kissed her, then he continued.

It’s all about the words you use.

Now the following is not so much a real grammatical or spelling error, but more a stylistic error: redundancy in writing.

She cuddled up to Mitsuhito even more, before she closed her eyes and slept in. Mitsuhito lay there a little longer while looking into the night sky and thinking about a lot of things, before he did the same, and slept in.

See how you used ‘and slept in’ twice in two sentences back to back? It reads a bit wonky, and you’d probably be better off using a different word or way of phrasing it altogether. Just to keep it fresh, you know?

Also, please explain to me how in this sentence:

Sekai had only heard the rustling undergrowth and before she had realized who the guy was that had stepped out into the open; she already had finished the short Sentence.

“Sentence” is a proper noun? Wait, what?

Anyway, awkward proper nouns aside, there was one thing I wanted to point out that struck me as kind of funny:

Well that’s new.

Well, that’s new. (If you didn’t catch the joke, this is where you’re supposed to use a comma after the first word in the sentence!)

Other than that, I’m not really too sure on the whole whooping out his shikai left and right somewhere off in god knows where. He can, and probably will be found out. The reason for that is relatively simple, you are using reiatsu cloak. This means there is no reiatsu reading.

When you release your kai, reiatsu cloak breaks. This means you instantly get a massive rush of reiatsu washing over the entirety of the place you’re in, and further. There’s no way that’s not going to be noticed. But, to be on the safe side – for me – just tell me where this place is, and maybe I’m just being a bit too strict.

At any rate, your writing was, compared to other stuff you do, mostly error free apart from the one recurring problem and for that I commend you. Like I said in chat, at one point I felt like I was reading an erotic soft porn light novel, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.

Because word knows I love me some ero at times.

My writing:
http://www.mangaden.net/forum/showthread.php?37391-3rd-9th-Week-269-I-ll-Trade-Your-Route-for-Mine
http://www.mangaden.net/forum/showthread.php?37393-C-3rd-Week-269-Where-the-Heart-Is

 

[Wayne]

My stuff:

Collab with Vin
AH NPC chapter

 

[Time Lady Katie]

Not a whole lot of activity from Group Two this week, and that makes me a sad Katie. But, then again, Lil and Kago not writing is why I get to grade, so double-edged sword I guess? Eighth, I saw nothing from you, and the grades you have listed on our Goodle Doc are a week old.

Bish
You wrote. That earns you 100 Div Bonus just for, you know, being a good guy.

The High Inquisitive meets the Ice Queen
Man, when I see an Eleventher complain about release limitation laws, Adelaide starts buying canned goods. That aside, you guys should probably note that due to those laws there are a decent number of training areas that've been set up in Rukongai for people to train with shikai and stronger kidou. Also, with these two people in the same place I should've expected that you'd mention Addie. The fight was interesting, and I think you illustrated the need for indirect attack. As usual your prose is impressive, and seeing Satoru in this kind of light is kinda awesome. I look forward to seeing where their relationship goes. The only thing is that the idea that Satoru didn't seem to buy the idea that a deafening sound deafened someone nicked my suspension of disbelief, so it made me nick your grade.
135/136


Wayne
How exciting! I've missed grading the implacable Kyu.

Rettifica Fortezza
Another piece with Vinny as the other RPer... Anyway, I really love Kyu being all instruct-y. Of course, I don't understand someone not wanting Scorched Earth, but whatever, Vinny's choice. I like the way you played up the barbarism and and absolute ultraviolence of the Eleventh Division here. Also, Lockdown is a cute barbarian version of Kenkyouka. But all in all this was a quality teaching of a tech. Oh, and the fact that techs being taught is just the beginning of mastering them. It's refreshing to see the point made that it takes a lot of effort to really make these techs do their all.
96/96

Zero Valhalla
Apparently my grade here didn't get saved.
Anyway, it was a good set-up. It was a really good set-up. The double-edged sword of ending such a good set-up with a cliffhanger, as you well know, is that the next part has to live up to the expectations generated by this part. And that's a huge deal because this one set the bar for the next installment as being really high. I know your writing well enough to know you can meet those expectations, but I'm hoping you bring your A-game next time around.
63/63

 

[Nargles]

Moony
+ 50 Div

Unwanted Attentions [116/116]

Writing in first person is weird at times. When pulled off properly it can give a lot of insight to individual characters, though when pulled off poorly it can end up being really repetitious and reactionary. Thankfully, you pulled it off great. I really enjoyed both of these chapters, because you really used first-person to its advantage. Instead of making it a clone of third person, where you simply describe what’s going on, you really provided a lot of introspection. I really enjoyed how it came off to be almost a film noir style writing, and at times I almost narrated it as such in my head.

There was a lot of personality exposed through your writing. The overall sound really felt sarcastic, even sardonic at points, but that really acted to paint a fantastic narrative. I really don’t have any issues other than not writing out your numbers in dialogue. This is just a personal thing but when I read something like 4000 in dialogue, it sometimes breaks up the immersion, hence why I usually like writing it out phonetically (four-thousand). But, that’s something trivial and doesn’t warrant a deduction, so take full points.​

Tom
+ 50 Div

And Now For Something Completely Different [60/66]

I don’t know why but when I read Setsuna, I read it as Satsuma and then I really want oranges...

Anyway, I’ll be honest, I’m completely lost since I haven’t read much Setsuna stuff so I don’t think I’m in a very good place to critique the plot. However, I can comment on the overall structure and style of the piece. I felt that it was really really close to being a great dialogue piece. Considering low action writing is something that I really enjoy, I can understand the style you were creating. Even though it mainly is a bouncing off of commentary between characters, I feel like it could have really had a bit more detail. With dialogue, one of the really interesting things that can be played up is subtle changes in body language. What sort of minor physical response did the commentary cause? Was there a shift in gaze? Was there an uncomfortable shuffle? Did hand gestures become more active and excited? Small details like that can help keep the reader engaged.

I felt like there should have been a bit more description on the scene. It had a very good foundational detail, but there was a bit more room to fully paint the scene. The setting really acts as a powerful force in writing, especially when there isn’t high-paced action to distract the reader. Overall it was a good baseline, but those small improvements could have pushed it right past that dividing line.​

Raph
+ 50 Div

Dependent Contracting [53/56]

So I’m really happy with your fleshing out of Fukushima. It really makes the bases well... bases. That was my overall goal with this split of Cerberus, so people could populate and fill up the bases to their liking and create a cohesive Cerberus group. Anyway, onto the chapter. Well done, I really like how you wound together our collab with your personal plot, and the thoughts of those who don’t have the full information. It really created a wider scope, which I thought was great.

Though, my only issue was not getting a really good picture of Janet’s personality as a whole. I really saw her opinions on things outside her and events that occurred around her, but I was left without having a good handle on her personality as a whole. I was hoping for a little more introspection that revealed pretty much sections of her personality that didn’t have to do with Cerberus. That’s probably something that’ll come out with increased writing with her though, so I’m not worried.​

Rob

Where the Heart Is [??/??]

You get what I get for this. Anyway, personally I feel as if we did pretty well, but I think we need to get used to mixing our writing styles together. There were points where I felt we dropped to ball a bit and didn’t give the other much of a response. Plus, I admit I probably didn’t do as well as I wanted considering I was getting back into the swing of Lucia. I think we can do better in our new collab by just keeping these things in mind.​

I’ll Trade Your Route For Mine [65/65]

Really well done. Nana really came out to be a shrewd political mind in this collab which was a really nice change of pace. The psychological battle between Nana and Feng was really interesting as it left a feel of neither quite trusting the other fully. The back and forth was snappy and well done as well, and really kept the reader on their toes.

The dynamic between Feng and Nana is interesting and I hope it continues to be expanded on as we expand this nobility world. I especially enjoyed the references to outside characters, since you and Shade did a good job in tying together many plots together, which creates a cohesive world. Take full points for a great preview.​

 

[Wayne]

Jesus fuck, that's a lot of shit this week. And from two people. You pricks.

If I missed anything ,you know the drill.


Vin – A Single Mistake // Milkshake // Ice Queen // Fortitude // Quincy Batman

I gotta say: your collection this week is pretty varied. This works in Alexia’s favor since it touches on a variety of different aspects as a character when put in different scenarios. We see her face as a student, a soldier, and as friend. In regards to a ‘student,’ we see that more in your collab with me and with Will. I’ll be honest, the flow was more dynamic in your chapter with Kyuto compared to ours. Her electrifying and cheery persona managed to compliment and even emphasize Alexia’s demeanor while training, whereas Kyuketsu was kind of a dick (unapologetically). Either way, both these training collabs panned out well, though if there’s one thing I’d suggest is that you tone down the learning curve just slightly. Make it a bit harder for her to learn some concepts to give it a more believable/realistic approach.

As for the ‘friend’ part, it’s obvious in your collab with Katie. The tables were turned this time around with Alexia being the one to give solace to Adelaide. It’s nice to see their roles swapped this time around, and just goes to show how much the two have grown as BFFs. This piece was laid back and extremely casual, which made it my personal favorite from you this week.

For your spar with Sage, I’m gonna be honest. This was pretty... meh. Not necessarily bad, but also nothing that made it pop. It was a straightforward meet and greet, and then training-fight. If anything, though, we got to see more of Alexia let loose a little bit this time around.

Lastly, your Quincy NPC chapter. All I’m gonna say is: u wot m8?

90% of the chapter was about the bank robbers setting up their stuff and the vigilante-Quincy only came up at the very last second fucking shit up and saving the day. I mean, it’s nice that Tokyo-Gotham has its own White Knight stalking the streets and saving people and shit, but give a little more context to it. Hopefully, this guy’s motivations, personality and background are given more insight in the next chapter.

Grade: 61 (Mistake) + 135 (Kyuto Collab) + 130 (Ice Queen) + 95 (Fortezza) + 57 (Batman) + 25 Division Bonus​

​

Shad – A Path of Knives // Trade Routine // Round One // Thicker than Water

First and foremost, it’s good seeing Feng try to establish a relationship (or at the very least, an acquaintanceship) with some of the other nobles in the Gotei. Your collab with Undies was where I felt Feng had the most connection with a fellow blue blood. His interaction with Haresuno had this feeling of mutual respect, but at the same time came off slightly, to me at least, as if Feng was using the Uchiharu name to further his own prestige as a noble. It kind of adds some theatrical flair to him as a character, actually. It doesn’t exactly make him out to be two-faced, but just adds more complexity to his ambition and motives.

I’m also glad you decide to make his interaction with characters more varied, rather than always buddy-buddy. The collab with Nana had this subtle tension about it, as if both of them were playing passive aggressive with one another, while at the same time setting up mind games to get a feel for each other. Typical Nana chapter, is what I’m trying to say. The one with Lucia/Hiren was the most lighthearted of the bunch, while at the same time still adding that noble charm into the mix. Lastly, your personal chapter. Kudos on introducing more people from the clan while keeping the focus of the story more on Feng himself. The politics of nobility seem to bleed far deeper into the family to the point that their every action seem to be dictated by it. Despite being around kin, there was this certain atmosphere that kind of kept each character in line and you did a nice job portraying it here.

One real issue I had, not so much with story-telling, is with grammar. You had a few errors here in there, some pretty varied. Punctuation, spacing... the grade school-kind. Nothing a quick re-read of the chapter can fix, but just putting it out there.

Grade: 55 (Knives) + 64 (Trade) + 58 (Water) + 74 (Round One) + 25 Division Bonus​

Hiren – Round One

Good to see you doing Lucia this time around. It’s a nice change of pace from the regular Ciro business, truth be told. Anywho, it’s rather lulzy seeing her bubbly persona, especially when trying to buy up all the 9th’s goodies. Despite her buoyant nature though, she still displayed this uncanny Riddler-vibe with all the questions halfway through the chapter. I felt like it was more of a mix between Lucia’s personal curiosity added on with her desire to test (and maybe even tease) Feng. All in all, great work for this one. Take full points.

Grade: 74​

EDIT: 102 (Where the Heart Is)​