BT1[SF] - John Doe v Orsalis Review

[Jonathan Meer]

http://cdbzrpg.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28527

Thread will remain open 72 hours, as long as five votes have been reached by that point.

All votes must be accompanied by C&C.

[Alexander Trafford]

John Doe: These posts were much better than your first fight, and I am so, so glad that you did away with Doell. It was sort of cute/unique/funny at first, but it died out really quick. You make grammatical errors in some places, and sometimes your sentences are worded awkwardly, in such a way that the reader has to reread the whole sentence twice, or sometimes even three times, to fully understand what's happening. At other points you jump around and I have trouble following the action, but that's coming from a writer who details everything slowly and steadily, so, to each his own i guess.

You have a good grasp on your character and an interesting attention to detail which is both fascinating and interesting. Your sentence structure varies and your word choice is superb in places. I enjoy your writing style in general. I like the first part of your first post, where you're reentering the fight, the best, as well as the second post. The rest of the first post didn't really do anything for me.

An explosion swelled and discharged between the two combatants, flinging both in opposite courses. The arena trembled with tree-bending force, another crater added to the worn-out stadium. Giant, dark haze of burning billows climbed...

Here's an example of something I didn't like. On opposite courses or in opposite directions would sound better. The second sentence uses a neat but strange description, which is fine, but i had to reread the connection between the first and second part of the sentence. I didn't like the descriptive start to the third sentence.

Orsalis: You love describing gore, almost to a point where it takes away from the post because you spend so much time describing the gore itself. I understood the need to describe some of carving up Doe's face, but it carried on a bit too long. That and grammatical errors were really my only critique. You push the action, you carry out fights in a creative and unique way, you don't just use the same method/strategy in each fight, which is good. In your second post your descriptions and your word choice were really good, especially in comparison to the first post, it stuck out in a good way.

The reflection in the second post almost seemed forced, perhaps because I didn't fully understand what was happening beforehand, but the reflection itself and how you tied it in afterwards to the end of the fight, and how the whole falling star bit reflected back onto something that happened earlier was really cool.

I didn't like how the second post immediately jumped into something, it almost seemed, at first, as if you didn't read the end of Doe's post, but that was just my opinion. I'm a slow starter to posts, so, ya know.

Vote: Undecided I'll go back over everything and vote tomorrow.

But I thought that the posts went like this:

Orsalis 2 > John Doe 2 > John Doe 1 > Orsalis 1

Edit: Orsalis

[Belle Hibiki]

Alex said a lot of what I was gonna say, but here goes.

John Doe:

Going to echo that I enjoyed this a lot more than the previous match I graded. Doell, while halfway amusing for a half a minute, really didn't make sense to me (I'm still not sure why a disguise was even necessary if it was so transparent), and I was glad to see him gone.

The writing itself is pretty good, though bogged down in some places by unnatural excess. I'm going to go further than Trafford on the above quoted sentence; "flinging them away from each other" sounds a lot more natural than what's in there. Remember that longer sentences, words, and even paragraphs are never, ever inherently better.

There are a few errors sprinkled here and there. Some sentences are missing words, turning them into fragments. ex:

The fighters stared each other down as the announcer brought his hand up, slicing it down through the air.

Whoops, looks like 'slicing down' got conflated with the motion of bringing his hand up. A single 'then' after the comma and 'sliced' fixes it, and I was able to glean what you meant, but only because I know the context.

On a positive note, your second post executes much better.

Orsalis:

First reaction: “Oh fucking-... Not another regenerative opponent. What's he going to do this time, rip out Doe's intestines and feed them to him?”

Second reaction: oh whew.

I'm glad that you held back on the excessive violence this time; it detracted from your fight with the Captain. I actually didn't find the tattoo marking at the end of the first post that bad, either, mostly because it actually served a purpose: 1) showing more of Orsalis' sadistic nature, and more importantly 2) what the scar on his face means. That, and the “stars fall” stuff, was pretty slick.

Very few mechanical errors that I could see. Most that were there could've been caught with a second read-through, though. Not everything gets caught with spellcheck.

The flashback seemed abrupt, but didn't feel out of place. I feel that some kind of break to let the reader know there's been a 'shift' would've worked better than just jumping in feet first. I was confused for a second at the end of it, seeing the announcer on the five-count, until I realized that his memory had actually occupied TIME. That is actually another thing that I really liked once I got it: you don't see the explosion itself, but the aftermath.

If I have any complaint, it's about the roleplaying of Doe. It's very hard to imagine Doe 'screaming in rage' about anything given every single one of his previous posts. And I get that it was necessary for him to be down for you to do what you did at the end of your first entry, but it seemed a little too easy given John's capabilities. (I'm probably guilty of this as well in my fight with Trafford. Sorry, Alex.)

Vote: Orsalis

[Jarka]

Both of you know that I love your writing for entirely different reasons.

Doe:
I absolutely love when people go meta, especially in regards to the happenings on the site. The part with Doe and the organizer made me laugh out loud knowing the kerfluffle that took place before the wildcard option was selected.

As usual, I really wish you would just start writing, like, an hour earlier. Your posts could get that much more in depth or you could do that much more proofreading. These did, however, feel a lot more solid than your round with Mal. I enjoyed reading them as always.

Orsalis: Sometimes you can lose the reader in your poetic-y-ness, which works really well for Sigfried (since he's so philosophically based) but doesn't always fit for Orsalis (who is more action mchatred). I've already told you everything I've thought about your writing in person, so I don't feel like retyping it here. If I must, I will.

At the end of it all, I vote
Orsalis

[Jonathan Meer]

Orsalis - 3 votes
John Doe - 0 votes

Orsalis continues to the finals.