Grading Session for Week 320

[FogOverLondon]

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



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

​

 

[FogOverLondon]

I'm guest grading Group 2 this week. That means anyone who normally sends Raph links, they can be sent to me. I'll be searching them out but you can PM me if I miss anything.

---

Man, how long has it been since I graded? :3

Anyway, easy grading sesh. I only saw Raph and Rob.

Raph [110/110]
[55/55]
[55/55]

All That We See

Quality writing, as usual. I've always enjoyed the straightforwardness and balance in your writing. You almost always provide the necessary amount of narration with dialogue. The dialogue dominates with you when pushing forward your story, which is something I think other writers don't necessarily do. I know I don't. Whereas many of us rely on setting the scene and telling the reader what's going on, yours is often implicit in a way that's very satisfying to readers. No one's left lacking in development, even for a short chapter. I'm able to get the sense that this is not a one-shot, and instead part of a larger arc. Nothing surprising given your experience and penchant for analytically drawn characters and machinations. Even if I did have anything particularly critical, which I don't, I bet there'd be little need for it, given that you just should keep doing what you've always done haha.

Miles to Go & That Lunatics Imagine

That's what I get lol. Sorry 'bout that...

Anyhoo, there's a lot of range in these last two chapters. I'm officially +1 more impressed than I was before. In Miles to Go it was funny that the first thing I thought was, "NEWBIE RIDES BITCH!" And by the third chapter it's obvious where you were building to. Though, in the moment, I thought the tension was well constructed. With That Lunatics Imagine I got more than I bargained for and was really happy with the macabre imagery of... whatever happened to Mouko. Again, these last two, plus the first one, display a number of author-skillz that make me anxious for what happens next.

And as a footnote: Thanks for letting me grade for you this week!

Rob [60/61]

Through Thick and Thin

I see no real technical errors, though I'm not the top technical writer in HD to begin with. I think I noticed a missed quotation in the dialogue and that's where your missing point goes, but if that's your biggest issue in the chapter... *shrug* Anyway, I always liked your passion for writing Noble stories. IIRC this is part of a larger set of events that you've been plugging away at for a while. That said, I liked the duality present with how Nana and Yuu deal with each other. That lingering sense of friendship, pointed with a clear sense of wariness between them. Good character interaction overall, good sense of moving things along without having to introduce any added melodrama. Nana and Yuu's backstory is enough to create the necessary tension for the chapter. Good stuff, as usual. You and Raph both show all the time why you're essential to HD, and more over, essential for your characters and their stories.

For My Grader: (This is a collab that didn't get graded last week. I had Sev grading it as a last minute assist, but I figure I can just post it here since I didn't see it in last week's thread.)

Masks and Rubble

 

[Apeiron]

I got Group 1

My writing:
http://www.mangaden.net/forum/showthread.php?38675-4th-4th-5th-Week-Gardeners-unite!

 

[Shadowwind]

Shade grade shade grade~ Arun was MIA and asked me to step in.

Kets get 75 div bonus nerra gets 50 and gloam gets 25.

Nerra: I always chuckle when reading your stuff. It is sort of baffling to think that the eccentricness you show off in chat is so juxtaposed with how much finesse your actual writing contains. The collab with you and gloam was a nice show off of Anshernia’s skills so cudos on that and I don’t have any particular gripes with your half of the collab.

Gardeners was rather topical but I enjoyed it overall nothing major in terms of criticism for either you or gloam here.

57/57 Illuminate
70/70 Gardeners (Graded up until the last WC you had)



Gloam: Gloamy some things I noticed in Nella and your’s collab. Overall I think you did a good job responding and playing off of what she did. However, some small things, a few of the turns in the beginning lacked any sorta of counterplay I guess would be the word for it. I hate when people do it to me or give me nothing to work with for their turns but in the general set up of this collab it didn’t detract from the pace so just something to keep in mind. The other problem I had is some of your dialogue seemed a bit wooden. Not wrong it just seemed super formal which I dunno if it was by choice considering how relaxed Anshernia’s speech seemed in comparison. Overall though it was a nice variation of the training collab format that worked rather well.


For gardeners see what I said to nerra.

55/57 Illuminate
74/74 Gardeners



Kets: Hot damn son you made me a believer in some sublime writing this week. Usually i subscribe to the ‘yes, yes stupid inner monologue’ syndrome but i dunno this chapter was expertly crafted to not hit the doldrums this type of self-reflection often manages. You’re descriptions were superb and managed to weave Shingo’s feelings masterfully with the expansiveness of his inner world. I really want to say more but this would just be a buncha gushing about how much i enjoyed the chapter so we’ll call it here.
74/74



Zack: The shoe’s on the other foot now son D:<

Overall I think this collab does a good job of showing off the types of interactions I think Haresuno thrives in. He gets to be slightly intimidating without trying to be while at the same time showing off he’s kinda a teddy bear, who will beat you senseless with a staff...

137/137

 

[Inks]

GROUP ONE GRADES HERE
​

Ahahahaha haaaaaa​

ahhhh​

TITS​

SORRY U GUYS, good ol’ Inkie here was just derping left and right on this grading session (KNEW I should have posted in here early on to avoid any confusion) AND SO BASICALLY I started grading like...thirty...minutes...ago?
​

IT IS MY BED TIME AND I AM WRITING COMMENTS and basically what I am saying is I am super sorry for what is bound to be some comically lazy-ass grading commentary please forgive me.​

Also if anyone in Group 1 wrote ‘asides me n’ Undies, I am mentally damaged and didn’t find it. Quickly send help.

---

- Lambo -
[168 / 174]
+50 Div Bonus


​

Masks and Rubble [1,745]
[84 / 87]
[168 /174] [PM]


Wow. WELL.

UM.

HM.

I will be super honest: I have...very..very...very...VERY little (and when I say ‘very little’, I mean ‘absolutely NO’) idea what the fee-fye-fiddly-aye-frick is going on with PMs right now. Additionally (!!) I don’t really know the characters involved, either.

So this is an all-around ‘squirtle help me i am so confuse’ bit of reading for me. Your first turn mostly consisted of me going ‘...Absa-who? Lady Amwho? Who is Natalie? WHO IS DARIUS???’ but I think I slowly got the gist of things as I went on.

Sorta. (REMEMBER I am half-asleep after all). I got the important bits anyway! Blindness, angry...ness, telekinetic psychic fists of death...iness and whatnot! I think it helped that Absa-chan seemed about as aware of what the hell was going on as I was. And I do love me some handicaps, so him fighting blind was already a plus in my books. I ALSO love me some hardheaded mofos, so him stubbornly insisting Hikaru was the one who did something to him (or knew something of it) made me go huehuehuehuehue.

above: me going 'huehuehuehuehue'


NOW, WRITING-wise, there are a few areas of your writing that are a bit too abstract for my preferences, but I’m not so sure that’s something worth deducting points for. A few of your sentences also have some awkward construction, and there’s a bit of odd redundancy in some places (FEEL FREE TO IM OR PM ME FOR THE DETAILS, TOO SLEEPY TO GO COMBING BACK THROUGH THE COLLAB NOW JESUS FORGIVE ME) -- but that might be stuff that could just be smoothed away with more proofreading (or practice; WHICHEV).

Overall -- ...YEAH WHAT THE FLIP IS HAPPENING? Some villains are injecting peeps with a serum that makes them go blind, get super pissy, have some wack-ass nightmares, and then...they are telling them...it’s...shinigami?


Ohhh these PMs are about 1000% beyond my ability to know what is happening.

/triple backflips across the room and out the nearest window

---

- Undies -
[/CASUALLY SCRIBBLES THROUGH GRADE HILARITY HERE

BUT I WILL LEAVE THE COMMENTS BECAUSE I DID NOT TYPE THIS FOR NOTHING. PRETEND I WROTE COMMENTARY FOR IT BECAUSE THAT'S HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU.]
​

Haresuno is such a chill motherfucker I can’t even

While your word count is a BIT UP THERE, this still felt like a very short threeway (collab); but HEY, it’s content, and it reads just fine, and really, what else do you need? Small, friendly little collabs like this are nice just for the bits of character bonding and interaction -- common interests and possible friendships and mentorships and all that whatnot.

It reminds me that getting in character interaction is kind of a THING with forum writing; only writing p-chaps or collabing with one or two people might be nice, but it ends up creating a sense of isolation with the character. A collab about three shinigami chatting away about gardening might not seem like much at all on the surface, but weaving characters’ stories together is always good, and it’s always refreshing to see how different characters interact with each other, too.

OKAY RAMBLING OVER.

On a less...abstract? note, your writing was pretty much good (honest to god you can’t go wrong with Fifth Division grounds shenanigans and rascally twins). There was a minor error here or weird sentence structure there, but overall I liked reading your turns -- especially since you were really the one setting the mood and environment for the collab.

---

GRADING IS COMPLICATE. MY LIFE IS COMPLICATE. (PS unless i am misunderstand, I WILL BE GRADING NEXT WEEK; SO LET'S ROLL WITH THAT ASSUMPTION)

3:42 (HERE'S MY CHAP; GRADER DON’T HURT ME; DON'T HURT ME; NO MORE)

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Nelo

Hot Shower Scene [49/51]

I guess that this was a bit of a recap of things. It worked well as such but it just left me feeling a teensy bit flat. I suppose that as a sister chap to Inks it did work a bit better. At least the shower description was really well done. Also there were a few sentences that were fragments. I guess that maybe I just need a little more galvanization.


Bunz

Riff/Raff [86/86]

Ya know you've made comments about how Sachiko has a better developed personality compared to Toki already but I beg to differ. You wrote Toki really well here and made her seem tough and simultaneously vulnerable. In fact, the sort of noir tone that this whole collab had worked beautifully.


LetMeIn [54/56]

I like the way this was done as a video diary and how bewildered Sachiko was by what she'd experienced. I think the general mood of the chapter was right and from that point of view I liked it. The points were docked for simple grammatical errors sort of peppered throughout but the basic idea was great!


Sev

Riff/Raff [86/86]

I didn't realize that Shangri-La was still around. I'd dig a collab in which a tall, cool drink of a Cerberus Chairman walks into a bar but I digress. This was nicely written and you definitely made Masato seem suitably menacing and dangerous. Good stuff, sir!

My link (someone PLEASE grade me): http://www.mangaden.net/forum/showthread.php?38851-Week-320-A-Twisted-Mind

 

[bankzu]

Moon

Week 318
Bleeding [65/65]

This was really well written. I love the way you manage to transition into different things without losing momentum and keeping one interested to keep on reading. The chapter was an interesting read and we got to see a little more of Yaname which is always wonderful. Poor thing has nightmares and all. I am a little disappointed in Yaname though. Who the hell drinks tea when there is coffee? Wonderful writing here Mewn.

Week 319
Security Breach part 1 [76/76]

Another well written piece you got here mr Mwn. There is a good flow going and the introduction of characters is quite on point, not interfering with the story or the flow in any way. Also, I think I love Emily!

Week 320
A Twisted mind [53/53]

Mwn is on a roll! Fine work here mister! I’m a little surprised that they still had the same keycode for the building that Agent Ono knew but that was probably part of their plan. A shame none of them picked up on that. Again, the Gothic Lolita is portrayed in a great way and it almost feels as if Zakki might be a little of a side-character here. I love it! Great work Mwn!

Take a 100 division bonus for such great writing consecutively for three weeks!

Please tell me if I missed anything.

 

[swaswj]

Berri - 62/62

I have to say, it's impressive that you can make this seem so real. The chapter is a strong portrayal of suppressed depression and coming to terms with the idea of facing demons (in this case, literally). The stark contrast between this glimpse of a dark, serious Rufus and the usual happy-go-lucky playboy adds weight to the scene. Even the part about sneaking a photo of Raury in the shower feels less like comic relief and more just Rufus trying to capture a bit of his carefree self.

Great chapter, great imagery.

3:42 AM (1246) 62/62