Grading Session for Week 286

[K3]

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

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

Grades are due 11:59 PM July 23rd

 

[Wayne]

Yep. I won't be able to grade for this week unfortunately. Sorry kids.

It'd be great if someone covered for me. Kthnxbai.

 

[K3]

GROUP TWO GRADING
PM me missed links.​

Dys:

[156/156]Only You can Prevent Forest Fires:

So I have a lot more to say about the overarching structure of the collab down in Bish's comments, so you may want to peek over there for some additional comments if you're interested. That aside, let's get down to business.

I've grown to rather quickly enjoy your writing style - you have a good sense of how to contain paragraphs, the flow of your turns lines up perfectly to the pace of the collab, and you provide some very good characterization with Adele. I would, however, like to bring up one thing real quick.

The cat ears being able to hear spiritual energy is cool, but I'd like you to be a little more careful in managing the extent to which this allows Adele insight to others. You've kept it very tasteful so far, which is a testament to your solid fundamentals in writing, but it does bear repeating with how prevalent it is in this collab. It's great to have something to distinguish your character both physically, and narratively, but try to remember that it only makes sense to a certain extent before it starts to cross into the territory that requires a feat, or ability of some kind, to exist.

[35/35]Motives:

Remember to label your weeks!

This was a neat little aside, but you missed a couple paragraph breaks. Since this is a more transitional piece, I can't really give much feedback on it. The writing was, more or less, solid. I look forward to seeing what comes of this little arc you have going.

[101/111]Kitten's First Shopping Spree:

Now this was a fun read, but there happens to be a problem. I'll get to it in a second.

Overall, I quite liked the content. Good pacing, you managed to keep the characterization of Adele strong even with the addition of Midnight to the repertoire. The overall purpose of the collab didn't seem very high in scope, but it doesn't always have to be.

The problem here, is the fact that you broke one of Seireitei's laws by going to the Living World without a mission, or appropriate authorization. From the Crime and Punishment thread:

A Shinigami may not enter or remain in the Living World without a mission or appropriate authorization. Anyone caught doing so will serve 10 years in the Seventh Division.

Deal with it as you see fit.

Bish:

[152/156]Only You can Prevent Forest Fires:

This kind of highlights some of the problems inherent to 3-man closed collabs. The flow of the piece was, at times, very stuttering. Your writing styles clashed in a way that didn't make for an easy read in this format, and I'd recommend that next time you write with 2 or more people (any of which you haven't written too much with) you do it in open-post format.

Moving on, the content was nice and your characterization shone through very well. Satoru plays a very good, cryptic Mystic mentor. His demeanour is misleading, often disguising the reasons he was promoted in the first place (that's a good thing). There were, however, a few hiccups.

One thing I'd like you to focus on doing in the future is properly separating your paragraphs. Each paragraph should be a self-contained instance, including dialogue paragraphs. The one instance I'd like to bring up is this one:

Quote

“An excellent question, Duelist!” Satoru responded with a slightly forced enthusiasm to lighten the sizzling tension. He made a sweeping gesture behind him toward the landscape behind him. It was a dramatic sight, really. On one side, the landscape was lush and green with rolling hills and much flora. Some of the plants were coated in a fine layer of soot that had blown over, but for the most part it was intact. On the other side, the entire valley had been burned to an extra crispy caricature of its former self. The dark landscape appeared to be a cruel charcoal drawing of what the land once was.

After the first sentence after your dialogue (which is a descriptive of the dialogue), you should've started a new paragraph. Everything that follows the first sentence is an entirely new subject, and should be in a new paragraph as a result. Try to remember this in the future, where each paragraph should be its own topic, no matter how short it may be.

Beyond that, there are only a couple of other things worth mentioning: It's zanpakuto, not zanpaktou (Japanese phonetics always have a vowel at the end - ka, ki, ku, ke, ko), and remember to proofread your writing. I found a couple of formatting slips, like color tags.

Aside from these, you provide a good piece that does a great job of getting characters to interact without detracting from the overarching purpose of the collab, which was solid in its narrative. Keep up the good work.

[132/152]Negation:

Okay this is something that continues to bug me, and really needs to stop.

Trained Feats? They're feats. A feat by literary definition is an achievement that requires great courage, skill, or strength. The mere act of learning one is supposed to be a gruelling test of skill and stubbornness. They are not supposed to be something you master the first time you try them. I don't care how good the student, I don't care how good the teacher. No growth is without conflict - removing it demeans the growth.

Satoru has difficulty convincing Haresuno to teach him the ability, but then masters it without any visible difficulty. There's no conflict, no sense of struggle - he simply does it, and then has it. This is not how training for anything in life goes. Even the most talented of people require practice.

So, where to go next time? Try to remember how most skills are learned in real life: repetition is usually the medicine. While it tends to be the death of literary innovation, using it to create stages of progression (failure, partial failure, sliding upwards into eventual success) creates a much better picture of effort.

Another good way to tackle a sense of dedication to learning is to include a progression of time - it's okay to have things take a little while to learn. Make asides to your environment as the training progresses. Give the reader a sense that time is passing, that a lot of time is being put into learning this ability.

Lastly, and this is the big one - failure to succeed is not failure to progress. By most rights a character failing on their first try is a show of why the ability isn't so widely spread - it's beyond the grasp of most. This lends weight to your character's dedication and skill when they eventually master it. You're a good writer Bish, I have every confidence you'll make the next one better.

Moving on from this, you and Hare both failed to proofread this - I found smatterings of grammatical errors throughout the collab. Finally, you need to learn to properly break up dialogue.

You throw out large, blocky paragraphs of dialogue without anything to break them up. Ideally, I should have a clear picture in my mind of what is going on at all times, even during dialogue. Break things up - show us posture, body language, the possibility of your character doing something while talking. All these help add weight to dialogue in the necessary places, and give the reader a much better image of what's going on.

Guest Grader: Cad
Nada.

Raph's Links for Week 286:
Snatch the Pebble, Split the Stone
Indulge, Restrain, Indulge!

 

[swaswj]

Hare - 290/300

It might just be my monitor, but I had a hard time seeing the split between your turns. However, the way you both wrote actually made a clear distinction when the perspective shifted, despite the entire collab having a strong overall flow. That's something that needed to be said. Nicely done.

I enjoy Raury collabs, and seeing Hare being such a lightweight is pretty amusing. I'm a little disappointed by how easily you both took the training; at the least, I would have liked the suggestion that Raury's inebriated state of mind made it easier for him to imagine a different reality. Still, it was a good read, and I like that the previous VC appointment was considered but ultimately didn't supersede the reality of Raury's constant intoxication.

All that said, there's a lot of little errors (missing or added words, minor typos), and even though I won't count that against you in the dialogue (drunken slurring go) it happens a lot in the narrative, too. Nothing major but enough to be distracting.

As much as I liked that Knocking collab for the exchange between Haresuno and Raury, the Negation collab was better in terms of training. Haresuno does a good job of explaining the philosophy and mechanical nature behind his technique and providing a clear path to learning and mastering it. I like that when Toride stood up thinking he had successfully learned it, Hare immediately shot that idea down. Training is something that should take time, and sometimes that gets overlooked. In contrast to Raph's comments, I like that overconfidence, because it was in many ways the most basic offense spell used against someone who has an extensive background in reishi harmonization and manipulation should be an easy test. That doesn't mean it's mastered, and it's implied that much more training is to come.

Still some minor mistakes, but nothing grievous.

+75 Div Bonus

When the Drunk Comes A'Knockin' (5930) 142/148
Negation (6086) 148/152
​

Ry - 142/148

See comments for Hare. In addition, I like that Raury tends to be what he needs to be in a given moment. Even if he's drunk and a bit loopy, you always have him kind of calculating how aware he needs to be, which is a good thing when a captain is about to topple off a cliff.

+75 Div Bonus

When the Drunk Comes A'Knockin' (5930) 142/148
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Raph - --/300

You will be graded by Berri. I do plan to read your chapter and critique it, since you had asked about that, but since the bulk of your grading was a collab with me, I thought it'd be good to have a third party opinion.

Snatch the Pebble, Split the Stone (8000) ---/200
Indulge, Restrain, Indulge! (2000) ---/100
​

My Writing:

8000 - Week 286: Snatch the Pebble, Split the Stone (w/ Raph)​

 

[Cad]

I will get grades up this evening for GROUP 3 (ACKNOWLEDGE ME IN ROTATION DAMNIT)

Maybe I'll write some too!

ROB:
Ukiyo no Kohon
55/55

Very cool transition into Nana's new chapter. Not much to comment on but I like how you talk about her starting a family and spreading her "wings"...he he. (Igasho is single, you know...he could put a hurting on her) I like the incant/release phrasing and def curious about the abilities. I guess I'll see next week!

 

[Shadowwind]

Vince:

This week i learned I have a hatred of three or more person collabs being posted in a giant block x.x

Anyway, I dunno it just seemed very blah in terms of style. Like Alexia delivers some dialogue etc etc. There were plenty of times to accentuate the lines with a better characterization of Alexia as sorta a “go fuck yourself” Nana-lite. Instead most descriptions felt rather, frankly, uninteresting. Sure she said something but even as simple as alternating with quipped or giving some better descriptors as to how she carries herself goes a long way to further developing the character and making the writing feel better. As it stood, while the plot was ok, with nothing much wowing me, the lack of any really good characterization sapped away what enthusiasm I had for the collab.

135/156

Your collab with Dys had a similar problem, I mean I understand not wanting to be extremely verbose to the point of obfuscating the point you’re trying to make (see wat i did there), but there should still be something to latch onto. I know I used to have a lot of problems doing anything but the direct actions in my old writing and I still occasionally struggle with trying to make it so that I have enough description to plaint the surrounding world. Most of your turns here, again the plot itself was fine and while not incredibly interesting to me worked, mirrored those in the 3 man collab. They read direct, which while ok in a fight sequence, doesn’t really help lend you any weight in a normal interaction collab.

100/111

Your collab with moony was perhaps the best of the lot but towards the end it suffered from the same problems i’ve been repeating ad nauseum. If you want a good example of how to do realatively short turns that still have a lot of characterization, moony conveniently did a really good job of it in this collab so feel free to look at how he uses his space.

90/96


Moony: Your writing, especially in collabs like this where you get time to just interact with another character, is always a really good read for me. As i mentioned in vince’s comments you do a really good job of characterizing the interactions really well without seeming like you’re on a rant about frivolous details. Premise was rather solid and I didn’t notice any really glaring issues that detracted from the writing so good job.

96/96


Vince since you're the only one who wrote (that i've seen) you get the full div bonus. If I've missed something please let me know.

 

[Inks]

never before, in all the history of mankind, has there been such a struggle as that between me and myself when it is time for

GODDAMN
MOTHAFUCKIN
GRADING.
...RAPH EDITION!

HORIZONTAL LINE BREAK!

---

- Raph-a-el -
[295 / 300]


​

Snatch the Pebble, Split the Stone[8,000]
[198 / 200]

Is that title a quote from something? It feels like it should be a quote from something.

​

I’ll split yer stone if you know what I mean.

​

I mean I’ll kill you. It was a threat. I was threatening you. It’s what I do.

​

ON TO ACTUAL COMMENTS!

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Damn you two write fast. [/endcomments]

​

Ahaha, but in all seriousness, I really liked this collab; it was fun, focused, interesting, and you and Will had a good back-and-forth going between Kiro and Kyuto. The whole ‘gong-punching’ training is a cool idea, and both characters are flawed enough to give the whole thing an air of actual conflict, instead of some boring-ass

​

‘Learn this new skill...and by learn it I really just mean use it. Just use it, seriously, there is nothing to learn. It’s like equipping a new item, stop fappin’ about and just fuckin’ use it. Oh but hang on first I need to describe how to use it in really, really vague, confusing, and all-around overly ambiguous terms. If you actually understand anything I’m saying, please stop me so I can reword it to be more bullshit.’

​

...routine.

​

Okay I’ll admit that little example really got away from me ahahahem.

​

But, yeah, call me sadistic if ya want (I am), but I much, much prefer reading about a character’s trials -- and how they get over them -- than how amazing they are, any day. Kiro wrecking his hand flat-out punching a gong, and later melting the fuckers, is real entertainment.

​

My only real complaint with regards to your part in the collab is Kiro’s little...brief...angst session.

​

Don’t get me wrong! Some angst and PTSD makes sense, I suppose for the character you’re writing (SEE COMMENTS BELOW; YES I DO EVERYTHING OUT OF ORDER), but it’s just that you get so...grimly fixated on it, I suppose, and describe Kiro’s difficulties in this incredibly dramatic,

caustic power yearning to devour the world

burdened armguards

guttural roars of beasts yet birthed

kind of way that really kicked the mood of the collab, for me. True, he recovers and the collab finds its way back to lighter, less grimdark territory, but the dissonance stuck to me, I guess. Like a burr. An grimdark burr full of barely-concealed angst.

But, hey, LET'S BE FRANK (always liked Frank): This is just me being sad-pants over Kiro’s true nature being much darker than I was expecting -- MORE ON THAT BELOW -- and so I'm gonna chalk it up to personal opinion-preferences than legit writing critisism. Basically feel free to ignore my whinging.

​

CONGRATS ON AIR-PUNCHING. MOVING ON.
​

Indulge, Restrain, Indulge! [2,000]
[97 / 100]

Yaaay, Bankai!

​

Haha.

​

Ha.

​

Ha.

​

...Jesus shit, son. If I wasn’t embarrassed about Mitsu already, this would be the time to start.

​

You know, this is one of those chapters that would’ve had a bigger impact on me...if I wasn’t learnin’ everything there is to know about Kiro in this chapter. It was a lot to take in -- I mean, dude, last thing I read with Kiro had him as this light-hearted, owlish, kind of ditsy-seeming librarian bro chatting it up with Hare or something, and now he’s tryin’ to give Arano a run for his money in the angst-tastic department. Just goes to show ya can’t read a book just looking at the cover. Or. Whatever the fuck that metaphor is.

​

TBQH, I, personally, am disappointed that AS IT TURNS OUT, Kiro also has a deep dark ocean of repressed memories and survivor’s guilt and bloodlust-o-rific angst just waiting for him to consume him at any given moment etc etc; him being more laid back than your previous PC is what I liked about him. But, hey, guess what! Not my guy and not my story and so I will shut my ho face and stop the whining. You do yo thang, Raph. You do yo thang.

​

ON ANOTHER NOTE, I really liked the visuals in this chapter -- the description of Sabi-dabi-doo really stuck with me (I mean, come on, giant, hulking, metal golem-monster, hell to the yes), and just, ya know, in general there was a lot of cool imagery going on. There were a couple of minor mechanical errors, like the incomplete sentence at the beginning of the chap:

​

The world around him, humming with life and, even closer, death.

​

that might have been intended as a sort of mood-setter but just confused me, sadly. All in all, though, it was a smooth n’ easy read. Gerd jerb!

PS Congratulations on the big BEE-KAY, son. Now let's pray Will can give you some commentary that is actually comprehensible and constructive and not full of attention-deficient whimsy.

...INSERT HORIZONTAL LINE.

---

That's it. That's all. Even that was hard for me. You guys just be glad you're not me, and that casual, everyday activities aren't all-day-long, impossible missions that are doomed to end in failure, frustration, and confused feelings of helplessness.

I KID I LOVE YOU GUYS AND I LOVE MY BIZARRE AND CAT-LIKE LIFE OF SLEEPING, EATING, AND LAZING

INKOUT



awfuck the spacing god fucked up now I gotta go and manually space this shit god why does this happen it's just too hard and i cant
​

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Tod, Ketch and Sprx split div. this week.


Tod


The Raven. Finale. [154/158]


Well this was interesting! Tod had to manifest the mask in order to save a life but in doing so he lost a little bit more of himself to the spirit inside of him. Mostly you did really well with this. There were some repeating moments here and there plus a few mistakes that I think are proofreading errors but nothing crushingly serious. Also the writing you did to keep the tension high about what was going to happen to the child's spirit was good.


Ketch


Revelations [54/54]


Short but sweet. I really like the way Rudo interacts with Anselma. The tension between them was well portrayed here. I can also really feel Rudo's anger, pain and disgust in the writing so good job!


The Church of St. Joséphine [124/128]


Well this was generally interesting from a plot development perspective but there were some rather sloppy mistakes that I'll point out first before making more positive comments.


There were a couple of spellings I just wanted to point out. "Appropo" is spelled "apropos", "eery" should be "eerie". Yes, I am a spelling Nazi.


The other glaring error that stood out like an elephant on a pogo stick was, "she beared a loose resemblance to his mother" should be "she bore".


My final pet peeve is that you're kind of pulling out the thesaurus writing again. There are words like "auguous" that you use which just make it seem too forced.


Now for the good stuff! I think that Rudo and Anselma have many layers to their connection which are completely worth exploring and examining. I like how you are having him learn the Q stuff in a way that's not blindingly obvious. I did enjoy this chapter despite my nitpicking.




Sprx


This Needs A Title [70/77]


Please don't take this as a super harsh criticism, Sprx. I just want to give you a lot of pointers and mention a few things to improve your writing. I only docked seven points because you're a newbie and I don't want you to feel too discouraged.


So let's tackle the mechanical problems first of all. There, are too, many oddly placed commas For example, "The sky was dark, and the air thick, as Carlos prowled home through the darkness." and "He heard shouting from behind him, a group of at least three male teens turn the corner, and Carlos simply turned and kept walking, not wanting to pick a fight, especially since he couldn’t win this one."




I'm not going to pick out every single one of these sentences because there are a ton of them but let's look at these two so you get some idea. In the first one I think that you could go with, "The sky was dark and the was thick as Carlos prowled home." Also you don't really need 'through the darkness' since that's implied. In the second case, you can split it into two sentences, "He heard shouting from behind him as a group of at least three male teens turned the corner. Carlos simply turned and kept walking, not wanting to pick a fight, especially since he couldn't win this one." I'd also probably streamline the second part of the second sentence by saying, "especially one he couldn't win."


Basically just read your sentences aloud to yourself as you write them and if there are too many breaks due to commas, cut down on them.


Another issue that I noticed were some sentence fragments like, "The stars lighting the sky, he always liked watching the stars."


In it's current shape, this is just a fragmentary piece of a sentence but to fix it, all you really need to do is this, "The stars lit the sky and Carlos always liked watching the stars." Basically if there doesn't seem to be any context to the sentence, you probably have a fragment.


I also noticed some changes in tense and perspective like, "He and his family are met by the guide, who the troubled teen found to be a strangely familiar man." and, "After following the guide on a tour around the streets, he showed us to our hotel." I am pretty sure you know about tenses and perspectives so just watch out and keep everything in third person, past tense.


There are a few other issues like writing out Mister instead of Mr. and Misses which should be Mrs. I generally recommend proof reading carefully because you missed a few capitalizations and spellings that I am quite sure you know how to look after.


Also try to vary your sentence lengths. You can go with some shorter, some longer and some in between. As it stands now there are lots of places where things are a bit chopped up or are run-on sentences. The other repetition issue is using "Carlos" again and again. You can go with, "The Mexican youth.", "the young man with skin the colour of milky coffee" as well as some of the variations you used already like "the delinquent."


One last point to make and that is the fact that this felt rushed. You kind of charged from one event to another without really adding depth. Sometimes it's better to spread the action out across several parts. I realize that in this case you were writing your sample chap but, in future, remember that you can give things time to develop. You can also try looking at things from different angles or jumping forward only to flash back. Basically just experiment and try a variety of things!


Otherwise I like the way you portray Carlos as a bit of a bad-ass. It's nice not to have a character that's a Mary Sue. I think that if you keep working on the emotional side of what he's going through it'll add a lot of depth to your story telling. I think that really developing Saida as a character will be important initially because he's a good one. I'm interested to see how Carlos is going to react to working for Orpheus!




Will


Snatch the Pebble, Split the Stone [200/200]


There's a reason why you are where you are in HD, Will. It's the fact that you remain amongst the best writers of HD. I'm not just kissing your ass in saying this, I really do mean it. The way you characterize each of the people you write is distinct yet your style remains definable, the action scenes as Kiro is trained were superb and you have a good balance of description and pacing. What more can I say? Full points are full deserved.