Grading Session for Week 317

[K3]

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

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​

Grades are due by 11:59 PM EST on Tuesday, 25 February 2014​

 

[Dysney]

Hey y'all. If I missed something, lemme know~ <(=^u^=)^

Dil
Pretty Colors- 51/53
Other characters. This is new. I liked the descriptiveness of the colors was seeing and the way they mirrored how Sayuri felt throughout the chapter, well until angry jerk dumped her in a cold bathtub and killed her vibe. This chapter was good and leaves room for a good arc. I'll be waiting to see where this goes, you've piqued my curiosity. Well done.

One small thing:

typo maybe?

His fingers coiled into her hand again, yanked her up out of the cold, and she felt strands rip out of their roots

was that supposed to be

typo maybe?

His fingers coiled into her hair again, yanked her up out of the cold, and she felt strands rip out of their roots

? That threw me off and broke the rhythm of the chapter, but not too badly.

Links~ http://www.mangaden.net/forum/showthread.php?38779-Week-317-A-Common-Encounter
http://www.mangaden.net/forum/showthread.php?38778-4th-8th-10th-Week-317-Orientation

 

[Rob]

Grades to come shortly. If anyone besides Raph wrote, please let me know.

Raph - Worth Its Weight [68/70]

All right, it's been a while since I graded - and thus actively read anyone's writing, and I wasn't disappointed. Nice story, great pacing, good use of fast-paced combat writing althewhile trying to give insight as to what's going on besides the obvious. I liked it. That said, though, your dialogue punctuation in this chapter wasn't stellar, I'll admit. It's certainly one of the trickiest parts of writing, so bear with me for a few.

I'm not going to nitpick on every little thing, but I'll take out a few instances that I found and try to explain why and how.

On general, when using a comma in the sense of '"Hey," she said.' you use a comma because what comes after 'Hey' is a denotion of the way she spoke (in this case quite blandly 'she said'). Which brings me to an instance you use it in:

He frowned, "Stop doing that. Just because you saw it in the Tournament..."

You use a comma here after 'frowned', but that is incorrect. "He frowned" is not a denotion of how something is said, thus it should be treated as something that's not part of the dialogue, even if it adds some extra emotion to it. One way to make this work, comma-wise? 'Frowning, he said, "Stop doing that."' (You have a few more cases where this happens, such as Kiro's eyes darkened, "This isn't a fight." where darkening eyes in this case is certainly not a means of speaking, so watch out for these kinds of easy to make mistakes.)

"Why," He ground out, "Do you keep attacking?

Now, my own knowledge for 'ground out' is a bit limited, but I can still do some explaining here based on two facts:

If 'ground out' is a manner of speech, 'He' should not be capitalized as it is considered an extension of the dialogue.

If 'ground out' is not a manner of speech, 'He' is correct but the comma after 'Why' needs to be changed into an elipses and the comma after 'out' turned into a period.

"Is it to prove a point? Recklessness? Are you that curious to see how deeply my power runs?" He ranted, his left hand clenching and unclenching with barely checked force.

Similarly for this: "He ranted" is a manner of speaking and as such should be treated as an extension to the dialogue you wrote. Even if you use a question mark, or an exclamation mark, you should treat it as if there was a comma and thus 'He' should not be capitzalized. (There are more instances where this happens, so watch out for these!)

Rokusuke sat up in a stupor, blinking the pain from his eyes as he answered hoarsely. "A fight ain't over until we're face-down in the dirt, Kiro.

Since Rokusuke 'answered hoarsely' it's safe to say this is a manner of speaking and as such the period after hoarsely should be exchanged for a comma, because it opens a dialogue sentence.

I know that old habits can die hard, and that it's especially true for things as punctuation - doubly so for dialogue punctuation - but try to look out for these kinds of instances. As a rule of thumb, ask yourself if part of what you just wrote is really relevant to the way someone is speaking in the dialogued sentence. If it's actually telling the reader how something is being said, then you usually want to act as if what comes before or after that sentence is still part of it. If it isn't explicitly telling the reader how something is being said, assume it's not and make use of the conventional punctuation rules. (Trickiest of these are things like: frowning, or similar facial expressions that tend to go with a manner of speech. As long as there's nothing indicating an actual tone of voice, they are not part of the dialogue sentence).

That said, it's been a while since I read some Kiro and I'm eager to read more.

For my grader: http://www.mangaden.net/forum/showthread.php?38796-Week-317-Worth-It

 

[Doc]

Why did you guys invite me back you know what happens.

LET’S BEGIN

A Common Encounter – Dys

I’ll be going through each part individually from first to last, just so you know.

This first bit is what I’m going to go out on a limb and call ‘interesting’. I want to get out of the way the fact that I had to take a second to disassociate your Robin with the other actual Rob we have. It would’ve almost been like reading subtle fanfiction about him otherwise!

But while I’m on that topic I want to make one thing clear: I’m not totally familiar with Adele as I’ve not read too much involving her, and being the newbie Robin is even more of a mystery! That being said I wasn’t prepared for the overtones presented here. It’s clear something is developing between Rob and Adele but I won’t get deeply into what I think it is. Yet.

It did come as a bit of a surprise to see things from Rob’s perspective instead of Adele’s. I appreciate the level of detail that went into physical descriptions. I didn’t have any trouble determining their setting or even how rebellious Adele’s hair was. But, other than two people meeting and talking about paperwork there wasn’t much else happening here.

I don’t mean to say that there needed to be something super exciting or bombastic, but for a 1,400 word piece there is little going on. So, I want to turn away from this for just a moment to look at paragraph structuring.

Largely this is an easy read but there are a couple of clumps of text (in the beginning and towards the middle) that could probably be split into two paragraphs for easier reading. It may not seem important but preventing one’s work from becoming a series of text-walls enhances the experience dramatically.

Back on topic! There’s an awkward moment towards the middle that the narration breaks from Rob’s point of view and shifts over to Adele.

Other than his observations of Adele – of which we get a great deal, with very little of his mind outside of fixation on her, more on that in a minute – this is the only break from Rob’s stream of consciousness. I’m not certain if this came about because you wish to have a mix of their perspectives throughout, or if you had nothing else for Rob until the dialogue started back up.

I’ve already said how it’s clear something is building between the American and the nekogami. However, when the two briefly part ways we had a chance to see Rob while he isn’t staring longingly at Adele. It was a small segment, but it still would have been an opportunity to build him as an individual. As it stands we only know his feelings towards Adele and he (strangely) doesn’t speak much Japanese in a largely Japanese society.

It wasn’t a big glaring thing but, as Robin is in fact a Player-Character and not an NPC it would be great to see him all by his lonesome even if briefly. If you’d prefer to include him with Adele there’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t be afraid to let him stand on his own.

Onto part 2! In which we meet the “nekozanpakutou.” Or rather, I have met it for the first time, as a newcomer to your writings.

Anyway.

Overall I was surprised to see a shinigami feel so guilty for purifying hollows. It’s fair that not everybody can show up into the Gotei as a battle-hardened vet able to disconnect the concept of murder from hollow purification. On the other hand there’s six years of academy training for that, which sort of confuses (in my mind, at least) how a person can equate a hollow hunt with the murder of a person.

I’d also like to say that I have seen from almost everybody a zanpakutou spirit that’s cruel to its wielder in some way. It seems like in an effort to peel away from the norm we’ve now got quite a few people whose spirits aren’t helpful mentors but stern teachers. Thus, to see the “nekozanpakutou” suddenly show up and be a gentle teacher (a purposeful juxtaposition, given that it manifests as a predator?) was surprising.

It was somewhat surprising to see this sort of subject matter pop up following what was just written. Given how it ends I can see how it would push Adele closer to Rob but largely we’re rushed into it without too much context.

What I like to see in writing is a situation in which a character’s feathers are ruffled, so to speak. When they’re put in uncomfortable, unfamiliar situations they don’t seem equipped for it can make for very interesting writing and because of that the piece works very well on its own.

On the other hand, it comes without warning as I just mentioned. It isn’t necessarily that each bit in a string of chapters needs to lead directly to the next, but I feel as though I missed a transition somewhere. What was it that set Adele over the edge? Why then could she no longer bear the perceived guilt of ‘killing’ hollows? If it was sheerly the pressure of her new position, or the appearance of Rob whose manner is too stubborn to let her block him out, it definitely bears mentioning.

I only bring it up because while it’s good for a character to get through emotional struggles, the catalyst for them can be very important. Understanding what sets a character into an existential crisis can provide almost as much information as watching her get through it. In some cases the struggle can prove to be more important, depending on how you write it, but the catalyst can also be a very important element.

In parting with this piece I’ll just mention that the fact that Adele’s inner world is oddly juxtaposed with itself. The “nekozanpakutou” manifests as a predator, but is rather kind. Her inner world caught her in a bed of thorns that harms her, and according to the “nekozanpakutou” if she loses control she’ll be brought to great harm. The elements seem to be rather conflicting but quirks are as quirks do.

Now for part 3 or as I like to call it “the part with that one font color, you know the one.”

First off! You don’t need to go so nuts with the hyphens as separators. Just using a couple and giving them a center-align will do the trick.

Let’s jump into the meat: the flashback. Even though it’s extremely brief it’s good to see Rob’s humble origins. It isn’t uncommon for those born in Soul Society to come up in orphanages so I will say that this didn’t particularly stand out as something new. More escapades into Rob’s past are likely necessary to get a fuller picture, but that’s not what this is about.

In terms of events there is little I can actually mention. We were given the chance to get familiar with Rob’s old friends although the most we know about them are physical descriptions, and that they want pocky at odd hours of the night. The trouble with shorter flashbacks is how little time there is for us to get to know the people involved, even if the intention is just to show a snapshot of how Rob perceived his old life to be more eventful.

However, for what we get of Rob’s former friends and family something just above the separator almost entirely defeats the point of this flashback. Over the course of a couple of paragraphs, the decision is made to outright tell the reader about Konoko, Niana and Myra even though we’re literally about to meet all of them.

The last time I was brought in to grade I was rather harsh with regard to showing versus telling. My stance on that still hasn’t changed. There’s no excuse to glaze over these characters with some narration when there is every intention to introduce them. If you have any intention of pointing out their personalities or their appearances, those details need to be demonstrated when the characters show up.

This is completely unrelated, but was there a chance that Konoko’s name was confused throughout the chapter? She is referred to as Konora in parts but Konoko in others. It’s a little inconsistent and can lead to slight confusion, even if the difference is due to a dialect choice. It wouldn’t make sense for Rob to refer to people with a formality other than English, anyway, as he was previously described as having little proficiency in the language.

Onto part four!

I’m going to jump around a bit because there is one sort of minor issue I’d like to tackle. By this part it’s overtly clear that Rob feels something for Adele. Up until around half-way into the chapter it’s more of a semi-adorable crush. For the most part Rob is shown as trying to break through Adele’s emotional barriers, which she ruthlessly keeps up. It’s a pretty straightforward case of cat and mouse.

That is, until, Rob mentally agonizes over the relationship between Adelaide and Adele. The fact that this detail is mentioned stands out to me like the Bat Signal in Gotham city. What it essentially means is that a character written by you is jealous of the attention his captain gets...from a character written by you. My opinion on love triangles isn’t important here, but I would like to note that it is at the very least slightly odd that a love triangle is implied here and two of the participants are being written by the same person.

I won’t try to infringe on your creative license nor will I tell you how to write your stories, but because of the way the passage is phrased it seems there’s something being forced into existence. In the event that you’ve got more plans with this particular plot then you’ve got no reason to stop here, but if drama is being forced there are less...overt ways to go about it.

Other than that little tiny gripe this fit fairly well with the two interludes separating it from their earlier encounter. There’s little happening here and Adele clearly stands out whereas Rob is almost relegated to the regular-guy-saves-the-day role. I’ve seen quite a bit of Adele and I think there’s more room for Rob to stand out on his own, and I think he deserves a bit more solo content.

I also couldn’t help but notice that Rob seems to have two conflicting levels of mastery over Japanese. When limited to his internal monologue he includes Japanese honorifics when thinking about other people, but he’s stated that he isn’t fluent in Japanese and even needs Adele to speak in English to keep up conversation.

When you have a character that needs to focus to speak a foreign language, their thoughts should be in their native tongue. Translating one’s entire internal monologue to a language you’re not familiar with can be very difficult, and seeing Rob do it kind of breaks believability.

At any rate I want to get on the paragraph issue one more time. It may just be me showing a little bit of obsessive-compulsiveness but separating out your paragraphs and dialogue would make it far simpler to read. My general rule of thumb is to try to stick to a paragraph no larger than four-lines but that’s a detail that’s entirely up to you, there’s no strict requirement with which I’m familiar.

Two more things! First: every single chapter was written in a different color. I understand customizing one’s writing but in the future it might be easier to choose a single color for a single character in order to make their individual chapters more easily recognizable. Second: at some point in either your first or last post, if you could put up a final word count that shows the total of all parts, it’d sure save time. Nobody likes to do math.

Orientation – Also Dys!

IT’S NOT OVAH YET

If I said I didn’t like the huge juxtaposition of Rob’s and Adele’s reactions to Aiden I’d be lying. The fact that Adele was immediately annoyed whereas Rob was super excited provided an interesting dynamic. Is Rob’s enthusiasm towards children in the face of Adele’s dismissiveness foreshadowing? What a mysterious collab.

As I like to say, a collab should be a showcase of a character’s personality and this collab is a good example. I did find, though, that if a shinigami has enough time to mentor somebody else’s adopted child they must have it pretty easy. It’s not necessarily a criticism but I do notice more often than not that the balance of souls seems to rank below random hijinks in terms of priority.

I couldn’t help but notice something odd that Rob himself was confused by. It’s fair that if the character doesn’t understand something, it will likely be explained later. Having said that I was thrown off a tad by the fact that all Rob had to do was think happy thoughts and it improved Adele’s mood. Is there more to her ears (which can hear reiatsu signatures, I noticed) than meets the eye? Or is this a property exclusive to Rob? I’m interested to find out.

What I’m noticing as I’ve gone through your work is that when Rob and Adele are together, Adele takes the center stage. There is nothing wrong with one character standing out over the other, but it prompts me to wonder why Rob was given status as a secondary player-character as opposed to an NPC. From what I can tell he has served primarily as a supporting character for Adele alone rather than his own person.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Rob needs time on his own if you intend to use him as a secondary pc as opposed to an NPC that exists only for Adele’s own plot. Maybe give him a few of his own chapters in which he’s all by his lonesome, and shove him into collabs without Adele to lean on.

Seeing how annoyed Adele was with Aiden gave a fairly in-depth look into her attitude towards energetic young boys. On the other hand, all we got for Rob was his rather spritely reaction and his weird sensation that feeling happy innately made Adele calm down. He needs more meat on his bones, so to speak, in order to connect with readers as an individual entity. As it stands now he’s done little other than reminisce about pocky and go ga-ga over his favorite “kittygami.” Put shortly: more Rob!

Winter’s Embrace – Hare

Or as I like to call it: uninstalled character libraries: the chapter.

I don’t like to call out a person’s wordcount for pretty much any reason. Among other things it’s unfair to tell somebody that they couldn’t accomplish their goal in the wordcount provided. Sometimes people run out of juice, or they’ve finished saying what they want to say. Sometimes it literally comes down to people getting out what they can in order to keep up their consec.

You do not have consec, however. The previous chapter in this saga was written over eleven weeks ago. While your schedule may be intervening I can’t help but feel more could have been done in this piece.

What ended up happening was a conversation about assassins in the snow, and Haresuno tripping on a gnarly runestone. At the end of it I kept scrolling down as if doing it over and over again would cause a second part to show up.

I don’t honestly expect everything to be laid out on the table all the time, but from the beginning to the end of this piece it very nearly seems as though nothing has happened.

I can’t say if it was rushed or if you are intentionally withholding information – literally any details whatsoever – to hold attention for the next chapter. If it’s the latter then I suppose I might expect something other than the magic stone (stated to be magic in the beginning) is actually magic, and then it’s over.

I also found it a little odd that the stone exerts a mental assault of any kind. Haresuno is described as being naturally resistant to mental attacks, and then it’s implied that Hayato is subject to whatever the stone is emanating. In setting the scene in this way it almost seems as though Hayato is only there to make Haresuno look tough by comparison.

If Haresuno had been in that area all by his lonesome, would the runestone have even needed to be described as emanating “a primal, deep-seeded fear”? Adding details to an object or character which are then immediately discarded because our protagonist is too experienced to be affected by them makes those details seem completely unnecessary.

It’s not fair to say that Haresuno has too much experience, however. If you want to have an item test Haresuno’s allies rather than himself, you can play up their reaction so that they become more highlighted as individuals rather than side dishes for our primary hero. Alternatively you could have Haresuno struggle for even a second while also mentioning his mental fortitude.

By establishing his willpower and then showing that he can be affected even by proximity it will give the object more power and make it easier to take seriously as something powerful. The fact that in the end it knocked him on his feet doesn’t necessarily demonstrate this point – if anything it’s contradictory since up to that point it was powerless before his unbreakable mental defense.

A Tale of Cats and Dreamcatchers – Pho

The beginning actually felt a lot like Hikaru stumbled in right as you were settling in to write a chapter for Udo. Largely without warning, Udo’s narrative is set upon problems with the Eighth mirroring the old Ninth, but after that these issues never come up again.

As a matter of fact there’s very little Udo throughout the entire piece. Other than offering some encouragement he seems only semi-present. Turns consisting entirely of a few lines of dialogue give an extremely sparse look at a character. Other than the blurb about Kago being MIA, for the remainder of the collab Udo might as well be sleep-talking.

Any other cue – any at all would do the character more justice than the droplet presented in this piece. It’s much easier to give commentary on turns filled with unnecessary fluff than a few bits of dialogue, each lacking almost all traces of the character’s own mindset Thoughts, reactions, physical cues – in only two turns do we get evidence that Udo is something other than a loudspeaker that dispenses helpful advice.

Nobody could possibly know your own character better than you do. By only showing us a few lines of dialogue it becomes nigh impossible for readers to become engrossed in Udo’s perspective and character. There’s not having the energy to pump out a huge turn that goes through every little intricacy of a character’s train of thought, and there’s only putting in enough effort to pass the baton to your collab partner and make them carry it.

I’m also finding myself questioning Udo letting Hikaru off the hook for attacking a Rukongai citizen. It should be a little more serious when a shinigami, one imbued with military training and taught to kill hollows in a variety of different ways starts to attack a civilian. To go even further: Udo lectures Hikaru about using one’s sword in place of binding.

By itself that’s a fair lesson to teach a member of the current Eighth. However, because of the context it could almost be construed as Udo recommending that Hikaru should have used his sword on a civilian instead of Keeji which provides a nonlethal solution (which itself never should have happened in the first place).

Overall I found the collab lacking incredibly in terms of content for Udo, and what was left over from that seemed to be an almost lackadaisical attitude towards problems of any kind, both his own and other peoples’.

Dys
A Common Encounter – 253/255
Orientation – 52/53

Hare
Winter’s Embrace – 52/53

Pho
A Tale of Cats and Dreamcatchers – 45/48

If anybody has any comments, questions or concerns feel free to bring them to my attention.

 

[Nargles]

Minj
Cats and Dreamcatchers [38/48]

Quick note. If you’re using the worth fourth like “The Fourth Division” you need to capitalize the Fourth since you’re referring to the division itself, it’s a proper noun in that case. Happened a few times in this collab. Actually it seemed to happen with a bunch of proper nouns (Earth refers to the planet so it’s also capitalized). Also, Gates should be capitalized since it’s directly referring to the specific gates around Soul Society. Google some of the proper noun rules to get a better handle on when you should and shouldn’t capitalize them.

This collab was... unfocused to say the least. You two touch on like 5 different plot threads but never actually go into detail to either. It’s just like “Hey you almost killed Reshin. Hey you beat up this guy in Rukon. Hey, Adelaide’s kind of weird right. Hey let’s go on a weird tangent about kidou. Hey, can I go to Earth? Hey, no you can’t.” It isn’t entirely your fault since it was Udo that was driving the main questioning. The short length of the piece didn’t help either so it was a survey that didn’t just go anywhere in the end.

P.S. Isn’t Hikaru several hundred years old? Didn’t realize the Lion King was popular in different dimensions. Perhaps it was the shinigami version of Walt Disney.

Resh and Gloam
Orientation [42/52]

Guys, taking a random kid from Rukon. That’s like an Amber Alert waiting to happen. I... kind of question Aiden enrolling in the academy. I mean, dude’s going to fight super death hollows and you guys are currently writing him at a mental level that seems little over a young child. Like, in my mind this is essentially telling a kindergartener to hold this sword and start killing monsters. You can start young in the Academy but most of the time they’re actually at a mental state that they can actually handle themselves in school. If you look in canon anyway, the people who join academy are actually more around the teenage mental state, while in this case it was written as more of a child.

Also, might... want to... lessen up on how you word Aiden interacting with Ren... It came off a bit... Oedipus Complexy, especially the while ‘met his mother’s embrace with a great look of excitement and so on.’ Also, it seems as if Aiden was only recently adopted by Ren, like I understand the event that occured, but I would still expect you know some sense of detachment in the whole ‘I was attacked by random hollow’.

That also being said, and I think I’ve repeated this a billion times. It’s super unlikely for a hollow to end up in SS, and breaking through the dimension. It’s actually a super huge deal if hollows make their way into SS.


Ketch
Fear No [74/75]

Nicely written chapter ketch. Though I’m kind of getting a weird Les Mis feeling from this entire arc. Maybe it’s the whole rallying bit that’s making me feel that. That being said, I think you’re kind of stagnating a bit in the current act. The last few chapters have been a lot of ‘now let’s go over here and do this’ and ‘let’s go over here and make a speech’. While I get the buildup is going to make the apex really compelling, there is a risk of it plateauing a bit too early.

Rob
Worth It [52/53]

Be a bit careful with your capitalization and pluralization. Happened a bit throughout, but you’ve been in this RP a lot to pick up the random smattering that happen on rereads.

That aside, reading Kaede is totally fun. She has a very different mental state than Nana which provides a nice breather to Nana’s seriousness all the time. It’s a bit more wacky and live which is always fun to read. Chapter seemed pretty fluff overall, a smattering of character development that was kind of overshadowed by random shenanigans happening around it.

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Excuse my horrible lateness. WTF am I doing?!

Val

Recollection [110/110]

Here's your grade. I will comment today. Shoot me if I don't.