Thread Title: The Dancing Stones
Judgment Type: Condensed Rubric
Thread Type: Three-way battle
Participants: Revenant (Rev), Philomel (Phi), Shinsou Vaan Osiris (Shin)

As an opening note, I'm not sure if it is still standard or not but as a judge I would appreciate a note at the beginning letting me know that there will be bunnying. While this isn't so important in regular RP, in competitive RP you can lose points for bunnying without permission so it's nice to give the judge a head's up. As it was, I assumed you were all communicating and had permission for all of the bunnying.

This battle was considerably shorter than I would have expected from three such impressive characters, even with Shin having to drop out early. The Dancing Stones is definitely a cool arena, and it was nice to get your individual takes on it, but overall I thought this thread missed its mark as a story. You did have some decent individual efforts, but no one really stood out from the pack, which made this quite difficult to score.

Plot

Rev: 17/30
Phi: 17/30
Shin: 15/30

Rev: Despite a fairly simplistic and standard approach (a warrior returning to the Citadel after some time away), you employed the most three dimensional story. It followed a fairly predictable arc, but I still understood where we were in the scope of William's life. Your initial description of the setting was rather unimpressive, but you did the best job of using and representing that setting throughout the story. At times you dwelled too much on detail or let your posts run a little long (such as when William got iced to the pillar, freed himself, and climbed back up all in one go), however for the most part you did a good job of setting the pace of the thread and controlling it throughout.

Phi: Your backstory was a little more complex, but you sort of abandoned the notion of a storyline partway through and just focused on the battle. While in a sense this is good, the battle still needs to tell a story about your character, and your story was thin around the middle and scarce toward the end. I think one more post at the end would have really benefited you here. Your descriptions of the setting were probably the prettiest but I didn't feel like you interacted with it as strongly as Rev or Shin. The uniqueness of the arena barely seemed to influence your character's decisions at all. You demonstrated decent pacing but at times overdid the flowery writing, such as using the term "genesis" in the same way on two separate occasions.

Shin: Your story had me intrigued more than the others, but since it literally ended halfway through the thread, you lost some points in that area. I liked your initial description of the setting and the way you employed it - Shin's decision to stay on the starting platform spoke volumes about the kind of person he is, and made the battle that much more interesting. Your posts got a little wordy at times, I think you could afford to rein in the length a little, but overall the flow was good until it abruptly ended.

Character

Rev: 14/30
Phi: 14/30
Shin: 15/30

Rev: Your dialogue was limited and a little cliche (the closing line in particular), however you did have some decent internal dialogue and I actually liked the fact that William mostly saved his breath for fighting, and then spoke while impaled on Phi's sword to bait his trap. I liked the way you drove your writing with action, but at times you get a little too caught up in it and either over-describe or simply put too much in one post. I'll point again to post #8 where you did both of these things. From the beginning onward I got a growing sense of type of person William is, however his personality never really became compelling or especially interesting, in fact like the dialogue it was at times a little cliche.

Phi: Bringing an entire cast of characters into a battle certainly set you up to employ dialogue more than the others, however I never felt you really used this to your advantage. You did a good job of representing the actions of your various characters, but at times your flowery language makes the actual events fairly muddy. The worst example of this was in post #9 where I couldn't be sure if you were saying Delath was flying or just being metaphorical. Since your profile says Delath can't fly I figured it was a metaphor, but first of all this forced me to stop reading and look at your profile, and second of all it really seemed to confuse Rev as he references a flying dragon in his next post. You challenged yourself more than the others by bringing multiple personas to the battle, and while I wasn't blown away by them, I thought you rose to the occasion adequately.

Shin: You employed dialogue to assist in telling the story, both internal and external, and did the best job of using it to represent your character. Your actions were probably the best described with the least redundancy, and told the most about the type of person Shinsou is. That persona really shone through in the posts you did make, and I have a feeling if you'd stuck around you would have taken this category by storm.

Prose

Rev: 21/30
Phi: 19/30
Shin: 17/30

Rev: You demonstrated solid mechanics throughout the thread, I only caught a handful of small typographical errors in your writing that an extra proofread might eliminate. William's story was the easiest to follow and except for a few places where less would have been more, your prose was quite clear. You didn't employ many advanced literary techniques, however when you did they landed fairly effectively, so I'd encourage you to do more in this area.

Phi: Mechanically you had the most errors in the thread. There weren't any that feel worth mentioning, I think they're all just typos that you missed in editing, but there were a noticeable number of them. I would definitely recommend doing an extra editing pass, preferably reading back what you've written out loud as this can be very helpful in catching these small errors. You employed the most literary technique of anyone in the battle, however because of the overall thickness of your writing these didn't always land, in fact at times it seems like you were using a metaphor for the sake of using a metaphor.

Shin: I didn't notice many mechanical or clarity issues in your writing, but because you wrote so much less than the others I had to dock you a bit in these areas. Your literary devices when you used them were strong, but again there just wasn't enough presence for you to score very well.

Wildcard

Rev: 5/10
Phi: 5/10
Shin: 5/10

I considered docking both Rev and Phi a point each for instances of powergaming, but since in both cases there were some clarity issues, I'll just issue you each a warning. Rev, I was completely confused by the part about William flying in post #12. I had to do my homework to find out that as of level 11 William actually could fly, so that was probably fair game, but it would have helped a lot if you'd mentioned ICly that he can fly at some point, such as thinking to himself at the beginning "I'll avoid flying because of the winds," or something. Phi, your use of Delath did not feel at all representative of a thirty foot earth dragon. Considering he doesn't have any enhanced agility, I would have expected him to be extremely awkward (at best) on the pillars meant for nimble human sized creatures. The way he was effortlessly "dancing" across them really rang false, and if you'd actually used him more I might have taken a point away. Shin, since you already lost points for dropping out early and I didn't dock the others here, I didn't dock you either.

Totals

Rev: 57/100
Phi: 55/100
Shin: 52/100

Revenant Wins!

Revenant receives 3675 EXP and 80 GP and pays 4 AP for the judgment

Philomel receives 1050 EXP and 30 GP

Shinsou Vaan Osiris receives 1050 EXP and 10 GP

Congratulations! If anyone has any questions or requires any clarification don't hesitate to PM me.