Grading Session for Week 312

[K3]

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

Group 1 (Hare): 1st/5th/9th Divisions
Group 2 (Raph): 2nd/3rd/6th/11th Divisions
Group 3 (Katie): 7th/10th/12th Divisions
Group 4 (Hiren): 4th/8th/13th Divisions
Group 5 (Moon): AHs/Vizards/Quincies
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Grades are due by 11:59 PM EST on Tuesday, 21 January 2014​

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[Dysney]

Hey guys. Helping Katie out this week.

Drag

Hey Drag, first time grading you, so take a 100 pt div bonus. I believe you're also due a PM bonus, so... yeah.

Onward!

Nonbeliever: I liked the level of detail you went into in this one, especially towards the beginning (actually made me kinda hungry) as well as the lack of misspelled words, typos, grammar errors, and the like. I also like Eiji's character, he's relatively calm and consistent. Even when the hollow started beating up on him, you kept him in character. Towards the end, I was surprised he trusted the stranger enough to take the weird pill thing, but hey, it probably won't hurt Eiji.

I don't read your chapters too often, so I may have missed some things if I knew your character better, but I'll read more of it in the future. Eiji seems like a pretty interesting guy.

That's all, keep up the good work, Drag

Full points! (145/145)

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Val

Love is the Drug [92/92] + 1/2 div.

I am all generous today and handing out good grades. I mean you deserve a good grade for this because I really find it alluring. I want to know what’s happening and who these guys are. There are a lot of potential answers here and I like being made to question them and work my way through them. The writing here was good and the ‘trip’ Shuku’s on is quite creatively handled. All in all, enjoyable.


Attack/Counterattack II [118/120]

There were a few clunky bits in your writing but generally you did a good job of integrating Shukumei into the action and it certainly worked well with what I’d written, I must say. I probably made some of it difficult to integrate with but I tried my best. I like how Shuku and Toki are interacting lately and I hope to see it continue and grow. Thanks for helping me out with this collab!


Tod

The Line [80/80] + ½ of the div. bonus

I am really sorry Toddles. I enjoyed reading this pchap and I think we should have collabness because of it. I hope to catch you around so we can. I really enjoy what you’re doing with Tod and his whole situation. Nice work!

Bunz

Attack/Counterattack [80/80]

Very hollow, such evil, much Toki. Wow. Seriously that was pretty nifty. I like the interactions between Waru and Toki, he is suitably nasty and twisted and she is kind of in his thrall in fascinating ways. I find the fact that she has healing abilities while also basically being possessed by a murderous demon to be fascinating. Good work Bunzy.

Lost and Found [55/57]

I docked a few points for a) inconsistent capitalization of vizard and shinigami and b) a few minor grammar errors. It was a nice collab that showed some of Toki's wistfulness over the loss of her shinigami identity and the care she felt was needed in dealing with a Death God. I am also a fan of dropping Zakki's name in there.


Sev

Citizen/Soldier [61/61]

So I might be lazy or something just handing out these grades but I think you did a bang up job Sev. Masato was well in character and his actions followed from that. It makes good sense to me to have him react as he did and so you get all the grade.


Raph

Initiative Olive Branch [67/67]

I think that because you always take time in explaining when you grade, I should too but I'll do it tomorrow in more detail. Suffice to say there's your grade and that I enjoyed what you wrote. More will follow!

For my grader: http://www.mangaden.net/forum/showthread.php?38571-C-V-Open-Week-Attack-Counterattack-II

 

[K3]

Group Two Grading​

Rob:

109/109 - Hymn to the Immortal Wind [4340]

Quite the introduction to the Third. This was, from what I can tell, a drastic improvement on a lot of previous issues I've seen you struggle with. Nana has a sense of vulnerability, of plausible fallacy that she's lacked for a long time, in this collab. It seems to show through any time Vizard or Theron is concerned.

I can't think of much to say other than to draw attention to the pacing. The pacing was very well-spaced and your transitions are a lot more consistent in this. All in all, good collab on both parts, but there was a certain spark missing from the interactions. Think about how the characters' mannerisms can play off one another, play it a little less safe in exploring possible dynamics or you can't build meaningful ones.

67/67 - Initiative: Olive Branch [2670]

Is it unfair to say I enjoyed this collab? We basically shunted it out over the course of an afternoon but I enjoyed seeing Kaede get more of a chance to shine. I worry that her mannerisms are leaning too close to Nana's, and getting more opportunities to flesh her out is probably the remedy for that.

Kaede's dialogue with Shinjida was fun, and I wouldn't mind exploring the dynamic between the two later. For how short we had this, there's not too much to say beyond that.​

Thana:

100/101 - Bekannte Gesichter, Neue Anfänge [2006]

Hoo boy, I get to pick on in-game logic discrepancies!

For the most part you're actually completely in the clear, which is telling of your former experience in Orpheus. Couple things though: don't know what Tatianna was wielding, but no pistol in the Armory packs enough punch to obliterate a Hollow with one shot. Maybe the Epitaphe, but that's if you're packing some heavy ammunition as well. A Gravekeeper would probably take at least five or six consistently grouped shots to take one down.

Edward's interesting as a character, and you do a good job of giving us his boisterous mannerisms and bullheaded demeanour. I do wish that you'd take more care with Tatianna in observing the chain of command, or at least acknowledging that other officers exist in Orpheus other than Masato. Maybe that's just me being vain. A couple smatterings of typos in the last quarter of the chapter, not much beyond that. Glad to have another member aboard Orpheus.

59/61 - Citizen/Soldier [2449]

A couple things about this bothered me. Edward's weird dialogue has him use terms that someone of his nationality and background wouldn't use..? 'Grandpappy' doesn't make any sense coming from someone like him.

The other thing I'd like to point out for this is the very stilted dynamic you have between Tatianna and Edward in the collab. It doesn't flow very well, and it probably has to do with a lack of establishment between the two. Try to find mannerisms that the two can play off of, and how their attitudes affect one another.

109/109 - Hymn to the Immortal Wind [4340]

See Rob's comments for overall thoughts. I don't have much to say uniquely about this for you.​

Switch:

186/196 - Inferno II [3926]

Alright, so I'm gonna level with you for a bit here Switch.

You gotta work on conveyance. When you write a character doing something, or thinking something, or anything to do with anything... you need to make that feel real. You need to give the reader such a clear image of what is happening that they could easily relate to it.

When the cold makes someone visibly tremble, give us the correlation. Show us that it bit at Chris' hands, sending chills rushing up his wrists even through the sleeves of his coat. Show us that his breath comes out in tremulous huffs, his jaw shivering with the cold. If you want people to empathize with your characters, you have to be able to show us what we're empathizing with.

Show, don't tell.

Moving on, a smaller pet peeve is to not use ALLCAPS for dialogue. It looks unprofessional and is, in fact, grammatically incorrect. Seeing something like: "Chris!" a thunderous group of slurred voices shouted...

Looks much better and less obnoxious than seeing it in all capitals. It's unnecessary and really just takes away from the visual appeal of the content. Chris seems very Mary Sue-ish for who he is. Someone involved in such a crime ring is either so far out in the Rukongai as to be unmanageable by the Gotei, or shouldn't be in existence at all. He has all the right heroic capabilities, he's at the right places at the right times... it's very disconcerting.

Blake is another off-putting character, less because of how he acts and more because of the fact that he's not a terribly believable villain. We need to see the underlying purpose behind his actions. If Blake were just sick in the head he wouldn't have been capable of running such a crime ring. Every good villain believes themselves the hero of their own story, but Blake seems to be fully cognizant that he's a terrible person, and revels in it? His actions fall flat when he sticks out like an 80's cartoon villain.​

Guest Grader: Katie

100/100 - The Lone and Level Sands [4000]

No commentary at this time.

100/100 - Mysticae Lapsus [2000]

No commentary at this time.​

Raph's Links for Week 213

Initiative: Olive Branch​

 

[Nargles]

Gloam and Resh take 50 Div each. Nella and Ketch take 25 each.

Reshin:

Demon Soul [47/68]

Okay so I’m thoroughly confused about when/where this is occurring. It mainly has to do with Reshin somehow being in the middle of some sort of urban slum. Looking at his age, he died somewhere in the early 1900s. Credit cards, social security ect did not exist until after the thirties. In Soul Society those things never existed. Furthermore, things like social security are distinctly American things so unless Reshin lived in the US he’d have no clue about that.

Like your writing is clearly something that would have occurred in the later parts of the 20th century but according to the age you gave Reshin he was well and dead by then. So, I’m not really sure when exactly this memory happened.

There’s also something that I’ve brought up before about your writing. It’s flat out too verbose and melodramatic at times. He sounds like a goth album talking about the PAINFUL PAIN OF HIS WANDERING SOUL WANDERING PAINFULLY INTO THE MOONLIGHT. Read up some of the work of some of the more moody characters in the RP in order to get a good feel on how to set the stage for darker moody pieces. Right now I honestly started laughing to myself because of how drastically the mood you were going for was slathered on. Less is more!

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New Years [54/54]

You came, you saw, you new years.​

Pho

New Years [35/35]

New years party. Whoo. Anyway, not much to say since it was one of those little omake event things. Can’t go into super detail though it seemed reasonably popular though it ended abruptly. No huge glaring mistakes from what I can tell.​

Minj

New Years [86/87]

Standard omake stuff so not too much detail to reap from for this. Just a quick note, proofreading is still an issue. Weeeeird sentences and botched word structure seemed to litter your turns. Read through carefully please!​

Ketch

Temporary [115/117]

Man Manzou’s mopey right now. Solid chapter overall though with no glaring issues. You did well with the tone, keeping it somber and investing time to describe and develop your characters appearances. It did seem to drag in the middle becoming far too slow and just sounding so depressing without actually developing in a direction. Keep an eye out for that when writing slower pieces like this one, the pacing can make or break a chapter.​

Nella

Show and Tell [125/130]

Really good work you two, for the most of this collab. Part of my comments might be based on your personal stylistic decision when writing Yuurei. There’s bit of an issue of being very very stringent on details in your writing. That is to say there are points in time where I have absolutely no clue what something looks like/is described as, mainly towards Yuurei’s appearance, That kind of makes it hard to follow on what is occurring in the fight due to her whole... stealth business. Perhaps try to figure out how you can convey more of Yuurei rather than making it seem like a random void shooting magic.​

Gloam

Show and Tell [125/130]

Ren sure got mindraped. Hard. Anyway, onto the actual grade. Good work on the fight like I said above. Pacing was good, the back and forth even though there was quite a gap between the two of you, was still interesting. I do enjoy how you reacted to the memory abilities and actually gave them sufficient weight. Main thing for you to work on though is controlling the prose. I also suffer from getting far too wordy at times so it’s an ongoing thing. Mainly the flow of the fight was sometimes broken as what seemed to be fast reactions were detailed out in multiple thick paragraphs. Doing so really screws up emergence as you’re sometimes kicked right out midway through because of the blocky paragraphs.​

New Years [92/92]

Do the thing. Win the party. Do the sports. Nice job managing two characters and having both stay somewhat equally relevant. Sometimes one has a habit of being overshadowed. Otherwise, not much to comment on in these omake collabs.​

Don’t Die [72/74]

Formatting breaks good sir. They went weird as spaces seemed to magically disappear. Otherwise, this seems like a solid flow from your guys’ last collab. Nice to see Ren feel a weird mix of nostalgia and guilt about leaving.... even though she just totally left haha. Once again watch out for overly long paragraphs that could be broken up. Allows for more interaction between characters which really is a good thing for discussion collabs like this!
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Shade

Experiment [59/59]
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Fun collab to read. You and Bish had some good back and forth going on. I like how Feng's so blunt all the time. New guy comes to division, helpful encouragement is don't fuck up. I rather like this Ninth with survival of the fittest theme. Fits Feng and kind of honestly seems like a commentary on academics as a whole. Lessee how Bish does shall we.​

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[Time Lady Katie]

Dys
Sorry, two hours after deadline. I can let some things slide, but that's too much.

Mango
Here we go.

Non-Believer
Same story as above about the bonus.
Slightly more of an idea what's going on. Only slightly. Honestly, I spent more time trying to understand where we were with PM bonus than anything else, but I have devoted some effort to figuring out the breadcrumbs you're dropping. On the off-chance I figure anything out, I'll bug you.
45/45

The Lone and Level Sands
I don't think this collab was particularly well-done, but I would hazard a guess that the problems with it are more on me than on you. I would've liked to see a bit more engagement and detail from the Spirits, and don't think this was some of your strongest work - low on detail, low on narration - but it wasn't bad on your end by any stretch of the imagination. I'm honestly more dissatisfied with my own performance here than yours, but I will prod you to give your all, because I read the first chapter of your novel and know what you're capable of. There also were some missed opportunities here to up the tension even more, but I don't know the Spirits well enough to say that avoiding these was unjustified.
99/100

Hiren
What you got?





For Raph:

The Lone and Level Sands
Mysticae Lapsus
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[Shadowwind]

Huzzah Shades was told bob was grading but as its now Wednesday night and bob has yet to post... guess who's taking over?


Bish: I, despite my slowness with turns, really liked the collab though it was one of the more straightforward ones I’ve done. I think you did a good job characterising Satoru as someone who's genuinely struggling and trying to find his niche and it worked really well. Here’s hoping our next meeting isn’t nearly so drawn out.

59/59 Enjoy 50 Div Bonus

Brood: This piece was structurally ok, nothing stellar in terms of presentation, however its littered with a number of plot errors that I can’t justify full points on. A few key facts, dissertation in the Gotei is a major offense, but not something that would get the 12th sent after you, unless you are actively attempting to sabotage the Gotei or any of the Seireitei forces your more liable to have the 13th come pick you up for a court hearing than to be killed.

Beyond this, there’s some gross misrepresentation of just how large soul society is. To walk out of just Seireitei could take hours, after that each district is roughly the size of a small city. To get to “beyond Outer Rukongai” which would be an empty wilderness, you would have to walk for weeks if not months by foot. Keep in mind the later districts are unpoliced meaning you would walk through multiple districts full of murderers and thieves and cutthroats. Theo would more than likely be dead long before he reached his destination.

30/51

Berri: This is an example where someone was able to take something I despise and actually make it work really effectively. Usually I’m not a fan when people do the pictures/extraneous thing and attach it to a chapter. It can feel disconnected and poorly done. However, this was a time where not only were the supplements interesting on their own, they actually enhanced the writing they were supposed to compliment. You did an amazing job setting up Ellie’s feelings and mindset in a way that made reading it interesting and not an exposition dump. It was a nice introduction to Ellie and a good tie in to apparently march but regardless I think it stands as a really good, albeit much more mundane than usual, chapter in the RP.

139/139 Enjoy 100 of the div bonusu


Guest Grader Moonmoon: The battle writing in this collab was fairly solid, I’m always a fan of giant robot fights and I think you did an admirable job of controlling the baddie for the fight. I will say though, I don’t know if it was just the context of the collab or something about the participants actions but it didn’t really drum up a lot of “o man bitching robot fight” Like I said though your stuff was a nice step up in terms of battle writing and making things seem like they had weight so I’ll chalk up my reservations to personal preference.

154/154