Please post any comments, critique, and other feedback here for [TWFNE] Week 226: Inner Light by Redfin.
Hey Guys! Here with some commentary on the thread.
First things first, I really enjoyed how you set the scene, Arun. The description of the setting and the characters were enough to give a clear mental picture without being overwhelming. It's definitely kind of creepy, which was most likely the intent. I also like how in the entry posts of each of the rest of you have reminders of what happened in the previous thread & give hints at the characters' personalities and relationships, for example when Keydis elbows past Aeria or when Aelf curses and debates the possibility of a shared hallucination.
Another strength of this thread as a whole is how well you preserve the continuity of what's going on. The characters not only independently attack their foes, but they also interact with one another (although not always in helpful ways). There's a lot going on, but this helps understand events and what order they happen in. I also think that the interactions between one character's actions and the rest of the characters not always being beneficial lends credibility to your narrative by demonstrating how chaotic a multi-way battle can be.
What happens after Keydis kills the mage is difficult to understand as a whole, although this may be more due to the chaos of the situation than the way you are building the narrative together. I have to say my favorite part is how Aelflead throws Keydis in the end.
Overall, I enjoyed watching how you all managed to develop the relationships between all the player characters involved, especially Aelflead and Keydis.
There were a few minor mistakes, probably typos that broke the flow of the narration, but nothing too big. Just take a second to read over your turns before you post. All said and done, excellent work.
First things first, I really enjoyed how you set the scene, Arun. The description of the setting and the characters were enough to give a clear mental picture without being overwhelming. It's definitely kind of creepy, which was most likely the intent. I also like how in the entry posts of each of the rest of you have reminders of what happened in the previous thread & give hints at the characters' personalities and relationships, for example when Keydis elbows past Aeria or when Aelf curses and debates the possibility of a shared hallucination.
Another strength of this thread as a whole is how well you preserve the continuity of what's going on. The characters not only independently attack their foes, but they also interact with one another (although not always in helpful ways). There's a lot going on, but this helps understand events and what order they happen in. I also think that the interactions between one character's actions and the rest of the characters not always being beneficial lends credibility to your narrative by demonstrating how chaotic a multi-way battle can be.
What happens after Keydis kills the mage is difficult to understand as a whole, although this may be more due to the chaos of the situation than the way you are building the narrative together. I have to say my favorite part is how Aelflead throws Keydis in the end.
Overall, I enjoyed watching how you all managed to develop the relationships between all the player characters involved, especially Aelflead and Keydis.
There were a few minor mistakes, probably typos that broke the flow of the narration, but nothing too big. Just take a second to read over your turns before you post. All said and done, excellent work.
SORRY KYLE I KNOW I KNOW I'm the biggest shit in the world.
Anyway, I was supposed to give some feedback on this, uh...probably like back in 2015 knowing how I am, but here we are now. SO! Since Dys already buttered you guys up with nice words and praise, I am here
to
be
an
asshole!
Now! I have no idea how long this little plot has been going - I grasped you guys are in the thick of an arc here, some sorta weird ancient temple exploration mission going on or whatnot, but how deep you are into it is a mystery to me. Just know that I am goin' into this as a 100% outsider who hasn't even been WRITING ON THE FORUMS LATELY, TOO BUSY FRYING IN THE SUN TRYING TO PLANT VEGETABLES AND TRYING TO GET MY DUMB ASS BACK INTO COLLEGE. Feel free to take my...my comments...with a huge heaping helping of salt, or just disregard them entirely, after all what the fuck do I know?
So, in case ya hadn't grasped it from the context clues scattered above, I uh...
...I did not like this thread. Fight. Thing. In general.
It's always been my opinion that writing fights on an open thread sorta forum is a recipe for disaster - and furthermore, I've never REALLY been a big fan or proponent on stat-systems in writing fights anyway, though I also absolutely get why they are necessary. That being said, I think this thread is a good example of why I always shy away from big open-combat situations in RP writing: it's a huge fucking mess, everyone's actions get totally fucking jumbled and out-of-order, people sometimes take like 5 actions to a character 1, leaving it seeming like 1 character is sitting around with their thumb up their ass for a few minutes or like went to get popcorn or poop or masturbate IDK ALRIGHT, and the more people you have in the thread, the less goddamn sense any of it is gonna make.
I cannot even tell you how many fuckers were in this fight. Let's see...one, two...three and four...five...siiiiix?....and then there were the 3 stooges, uh, so....
TOO DAMN MANY.
On top of that, there were a bunch of weird working parts trying to happen here, like the pillars mechanic and the rogue vanishing and yada yada - but yeah. I just, from start to finish, had no fucking clue what was supposed to be happening for the most part.
YOU GUYS (I think one or two of you in particular) are especially guilty of writing too abstractly in your actual turns, to the point where when I went to read one of Aelflead's stat-spoilers, for example, I then had to REREAD the post because I went 'wait she punched a pillar? i thought there was just...debris from where she...landed, i guess?' and I might be 10000% wrong but I think that was because YOU WROTE ABSOLUTELY NO PUNCHING BEING DONE AT ALL IN YOUR MAIN TURN? like, WHY? WHY DOES IT NEED TO BE SO CONFUSING??
I read this thread over, uh, 3 full times. THREE FULL TIMES. and as i told kyle on my first viewing, the gist of what I got out of the fight is 'uuh, i guess they won, and a lot of people got owwies.' Part - a big part - of the problem here is, I think
A. lack of communication outside of the thread between players - or if there WAS communication, you really can't tell, cause the lack of turn-synergy really killed me here
B. TURNS TOO FUCKING LONG. look, I know it feels dumb to have like 100 word turns sometimes. Shit, sometimes shorter. But in a fight, the shorter the goddamn better, ya know? Fighting is usually action-reaction action-reaction. Stop describing the color of your beautiful OC-Don't-Steal's eyes or their long flowing locks or how this totally reminds them of that one time when they got hurt but it was years back but AHHH THE PAIN STILL ECHOES TO THIS DAY, AND WHILE THIS PAIN IS NOT LIKE THAT PAIN, STILL IT RESONATES AND INSPIRES YOU TO GO FORTH AND PROTECT ALL YOU CARE ABOUT IN THESE DESOLATE RUINS---jesus christ shut the fuck up.
There's a time and place for introspection (I was and am EXTREMELY guilty of too much thinking in a fight), but while fuckers are trying to slit your jugular with a blade is...NOT that time. Again, it took me THREE reads of this fight to figure out all the damn enemy-trading and characters literally flying all over the damn place, half of them like vanishing into the background to be forgotten by time and space while more active writers had a field day - and I think a big part of WHY it took so long for me to chew through this thread is because there's too much extrenous detail where there does NOT need to be any....and then important fucking actions are either left open ended or just NOT ACTUALLY WRITTEN AT ALL. DON'T VAGUELY OR ABSTRACTLY TRY TO IMPLY A PUNCH OR SWORD STRIKE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIGHT PLEASE.
Now, Arun, Dys gave you good yummy praise up there, so I'ma just keep on being a dickin' spazz, a'ight, you a forum lord or mod or admin or whatnot YOU CAN TAKE IT, AND PROLLY GO 'inks is such a dumbass why are they reviewing chapters anyway are they even ON this forum anymore??' ETC. THAT IS FINE. As a fellow-writer-person, though, I wanna be lazy and pin some of the blame for this madhouse on you. I know it's a pain to write more than one character at a time - SHIT, I have trouble writing 2, even when one of them is just like, a pet or whatever. Still, It was sort of up to you, as the person who both set the scene and wrote all of the enemies/antagonists of the fight, to also control things, I feel.
And from the weird choppy-shortness of most of your sentences, to the plain outright passive-aggressive frustration I read in at least two of your posts (U WANTED ROGUE TO STAB SOMEONE and then later YOU WERE LIKE DONT FUCKIN IGNORE MY FUCKIN DIAMOND DUST NOW YOU GOT NUKED I HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY), it seems like you just were NOT feeling it, my man. Whether that's just the writing in general, WHAT you were writing, the setup, the zombie characters, whatever, I just wasn't feeling it from you at all.
moon, sorry aeria got super-fucked up, also sorry cassius apparently got stabbed.
that's...that's all i got my ADD is kicking in and I have lost track of what's been said versus what I wanted to say so I'm just gonna...
leave...
now.
Anyway, I was supposed to give some feedback on this, uh...probably like back in 2015 knowing how I am, but here we are now. SO! Since Dys already buttered you guys up with nice words and praise, I am here
to
be
an
asshole!
Now! I have no idea how long this little plot has been going - I grasped you guys are in the thick of an arc here, some sorta weird ancient temple exploration mission going on or whatnot, but how deep you are into it is a mystery to me. Just know that I am goin' into this as a 100% outsider who hasn't even been WRITING ON THE FORUMS LATELY, TOO BUSY FRYING IN THE SUN TRYING TO PLANT VEGETABLES AND TRYING TO GET MY DUMB ASS BACK INTO COLLEGE. Feel free to take my...my comments...with a huge heaping helping of salt, or just disregard them entirely, after all what the fuck do I know?
So, in case ya hadn't grasped it from the context clues scattered above, I uh...
...I did not like this thread. Fight. Thing. In general.
It's always been my opinion that writing fights on an open thread sorta forum is a recipe for disaster - and furthermore, I've never REALLY been a big fan or proponent on stat-systems in writing fights anyway, though I also absolutely get why they are necessary. That being said, I think this thread is a good example of why I always shy away from big open-combat situations in RP writing: it's a huge fucking mess, everyone's actions get totally fucking jumbled and out-of-order, people sometimes take like 5 actions to a character 1, leaving it seeming like 1 character is sitting around with their thumb up their ass for a few minutes or like went to get popcorn or poop or masturbate IDK ALRIGHT, and the more people you have in the thread, the less goddamn sense any of it is gonna make.
I cannot even tell you how many fuckers were in this fight. Let's see...one, two...three and four...five...siiiiix?....and then there were the 3 stooges, uh, so....
TOO DAMN MANY.
On top of that, there were a bunch of weird working parts trying to happen here, like the pillars mechanic and the rogue vanishing and yada yada - but yeah. I just, from start to finish, had no fucking clue what was supposed to be happening for the most part.
YOU GUYS (I think one or two of you in particular) are especially guilty of writing too abstractly in your actual turns, to the point where when I went to read one of Aelflead's stat-spoilers, for example, I then had to REREAD the post because I went 'wait she punched a pillar? i thought there was just...debris from where she...landed, i guess?' and I might be 10000% wrong but I think that was because YOU WROTE ABSOLUTELY NO PUNCHING BEING DONE AT ALL IN YOUR MAIN TURN? like, WHY? WHY DOES IT NEED TO BE SO CONFUSING??
I read this thread over, uh, 3 full times. THREE FULL TIMES. and as i told kyle on my first viewing, the gist of what I got out of the fight is 'uuh, i guess they won, and a lot of people got owwies.' Part - a big part - of the problem here is, I think
A. lack of communication outside of the thread between players - or if there WAS communication, you really can't tell, cause the lack of turn-synergy really killed me here
B. TURNS TOO FUCKING LONG. look, I know it feels dumb to have like 100 word turns sometimes. Shit, sometimes shorter. But in a fight, the shorter the goddamn better, ya know? Fighting is usually action-reaction action-reaction. Stop describing the color of your beautiful OC-Don't-Steal's eyes or their long flowing locks or how this totally reminds them of that one time when they got hurt but it was years back but AHHH THE PAIN STILL ECHOES TO THIS DAY, AND WHILE THIS PAIN IS NOT LIKE THAT PAIN, STILL IT RESONATES AND INSPIRES YOU TO GO FORTH AND PROTECT ALL YOU CARE ABOUT IN THESE DESOLATE RUINS---jesus christ shut the fuck up.
There's a time and place for introspection (I was and am EXTREMELY guilty of too much thinking in a fight), but while fuckers are trying to slit your jugular with a blade is...NOT that time. Again, it took me THREE reads of this fight to figure out all the damn enemy-trading and characters literally flying all over the damn place, half of them like vanishing into the background to be forgotten by time and space while more active writers had a field day - and I think a big part of WHY it took so long for me to chew through this thread is because there's too much extrenous detail where there does NOT need to be any....and then important fucking actions are either left open ended or just NOT ACTUALLY WRITTEN AT ALL. DON'T VAGUELY OR ABSTRACTLY TRY TO IMPLY A PUNCH OR SWORD STRIKE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIGHT PLEASE.
Now, Arun, Dys gave you good yummy praise up there, so I'ma just keep on being a dickin' spazz, a'ight, you a forum lord or mod or admin or whatnot YOU CAN TAKE IT, AND PROLLY GO 'inks is such a dumbass why are they reviewing chapters anyway are they even ON this forum anymore??' ETC. THAT IS FINE. As a fellow-writer-person, though, I wanna be lazy and pin some of the blame for this madhouse on you. I know it's a pain to write more than one character at a time - SHIT, I have trouble writing 2, even when one of them is just like, a pet or whatever. Still, It was sort of up to you, as the person who both set the scene and wrote all of the enemies/antagonists of the fight, to also control things, I feel.
And from the weird choppy-shortness of most of your sentences, to the plain outright passive-aggressive frustration I read in at least two of your posts (U WANTED ROGUE TO STAB SOMEONE and then later YOU WERE LIKE DONT FUCKIN IGNORE MY FUCKIN DIAMOND DUST NOW YOU GOT NUKED I HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY), it seems like you just were NOT feeling it, my man. Whether that's just the writing in general, WHAT you were writing, the setup, the zombie characters, whatever, I just wasn't feeling it from you at all.
moon, sorry aeria got super-fucked up, also sorry cassius apparently got stabbed.
that's...that's all i got my ADD is kicking in and I have lost track of what's been said versus what I wanted to say so I'm just gonna...
leave...
now.