02-14-2012, 03:55 PM
So I'll be frank here and say I haven't read either of you two's former work, but I didn't expect much from a 500 word each post particularly because I thought Rose dumped Garbanz because he was disinterested in him and the premise for the spar seemed a little weak from a quick glance, but I was actually really pleasantly surprised.
The interaction between the characters is interesting because Mal Nova acts as the reaper, simply there to collect a defeated soul but it turns out the soul got bite. It creates an interesting chemistry where the reaper to collect the soul actually revives it with the vigor caused by the fight. The spar is a pretty sweet read from this alone.
Now the things with spars is the fact that the action is traditionally the focus point, but I really thought the strongest part of the spar was the interaction between the characters and the story told by both parts, particularly enjoyable to observe Garbanz rise from a broken man to one who wants to fight. The action itself was fluid, descriptive and telling. Each sequence painted a scene that was easy and exciting to follow, bar a few bumps that could very well just come from me not being a native English speaking bloke, but they were far and few between and didn't really do anything to drag me out of the fight.
If there would be anything I'd like to see improved from you two, it would be for Rose/Garbanz to develop his character a bit and try to describe him when using him as a person with more variation (e.g. "Garbanz does..."), particularly the last post carried a noticeable mark of this. I also do this in my own writing, so I'm not going to diss it too much because frankly I'm a much worse offender, but still.
Now for Mal Nova, this might just be me personally and I'm underlining this is just how I perceived it: It seemed you got more excited as the posts got on, which is understandable but while the first couple of posts held the reaper-theme; it held a colorful language, described the action perfectly without any excessive amount of words, it kept the "reaper" persona in check that it seemed you were going for with Nova and appeared to be proofread because of how well-written it was. The last post however, I'm not sure if it was because you just wanted to get on with it or if it was one of those posts that just didn't want to get out (we all have them from time to time), I felt you slipped a little on the reaper personality with some of the wording you chose and at the same time, the grammar of the post became a bit more sluggish with a few more errors or sentences that could be shaped better. If I would give a situation here, it would be to just enjoy writing the post as you would normally, but perhaps after proofreading the post, try reading it in succession of the other posts, because I think this is just something that could have been caught and I would have just about nothing to complain about.
All-in-all: I'm not 100% sure who would have won if this was an actual fight that needed to be graded. I do however feel more aligned to Garbanz, but I think it's more because of the construction of the thread/spar than any particular difference in writing skill. If this was a book or a novel I was reading, it would appear to me that Garbanz was the hero and Mal Nova was a test that our hero needed to conquer in order to be his former un-defeated self. It felt more like Mal Nova was a secondary main character instead of the primary main character and I think it's because while Garbanz had a little character development going on in the spar, Mal Nova already came "developed" and thusly we didn't see any specific growth in the character itself, which made Garbanz a little more interesting than Mal Nova.
If you had to pin me on the ground, I'd say Garbanz, but it'd only be because of the character development, so I'm not super comfortable declaring him the victor, but well, there you go.
The interaction between the characters is interesting because Mal Nova acts as the reaper, simply there to collect a defeated soul but it turns out the soul got bite. It creates an interesting chemistry where the reaper to collect the soul actually revives it with the vigor caused by the fight. The spar is a pretty sweet read from this alone.
Now the things with spars is the fact that the action is traditionally the focus point, but I really thought the strongest part of the spar was the interaction between the characters and the story told by both parts, particularly enjoyable to observe Garbanz rise from a broken man to one who wants to fight. The action itself was fluid, descriptive and telling. Each sequence painted a scene that was easy and exciting to follow, bar a few bumps that could very well just come from me not being a native English speaking bloke, but they were far and few between and didn't really do anything to drag me out of the fight.
If there would be anything I'd like to see improved from you two, it would be for Rose/Garbanz to develop his character a bit and try to describe him when using him as a person with more variation (e.g. "Garbanz does..."), particularly the last post carried a noticeable mark of this. I also do this in my own writing, so I'm not going to diss it too much because frankly I'm a much worse offender, but still.
Now for Mal Nova, this might just be me personally and I'm underlining this is just how I perceived it: It seemed you got more excited as the posts got on, which is understandable but while the first couple of posts held the reaper-theme; it held a colorful language, described the action perfectly without any excessive amount of words, it kept the "reaper" persona in check that it seemed you were going for with Nova and appeared to be proofread because of how well-written it was. The last post however, I'm not sure if it was because you just wanted to get on with it or if it was one of those posts that just didn't want to get out (we all have them from time to time), I felt you slipped a little on the reaper personality with some of the wording you chose and at the same time, the grammar of the post became a bit more sluggish with a few more errors or sentences that could be shaped better. If I would give a situation here, it would be to just enjoy writing the post as you would normally, but perhaps after proofreading the post, try reading it in succession of the other posts, because I think this is just something that could have been caught and I would have just about nothing to complain about.
All-in-all: I'm not 100% sure who would have won if this was an actual fight that needed to be graded. I do however feel more aligned to Garbanz, but I think it's more because of the construction of the thread/spar than any particular difference in writing skill. If this was a book or a novel I was reading, it would appear to me that Garbanz was the hero and Mal Nova was a test that our hero needed to conquer in order to be his former un-defeated self. It felt more like Mal Nova was a secondary main character instead of the primary main character and I think it's because while Garbanz had a little character development going on in the spar, Mal Nova already came "developed" and thusly we didn't see any specific growth in the character itself, which made Garbanz a little more interesting than Mal Nova.
If you had to pin me on the ground, I'd say Garbanz, but it'd only be because of the character development, so I'm not super comfortable declaring him the victor, but well, there you go.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]