Judgment

Thank you very much for your patience in waiting for my feedback. This thread presented a few challenges, notwithstanding both its length and format, but I do hope my feedback is both clear and fair to you both.


Plot

Story: Flamebird 5 / Rehtul 5
Setting: Flamebird 4 / Rehtul 3
Pacing: Flamebird 4 / Rehtul 5

Total: Flamebird: 13 / 30 / Rehtul: 13 / 30


Felicity, I felt you started a little slower than Rehtul. In the beginning, I felt you spent too much time explaining the mixture of current events before arriving at training as the reason for being at the Citadel for this “chance encounter”. While there is nothing really wrong with this in isolation, I felt your flaw here (and not just here, but in other areas) was not what you did, but what you could have done. Alluding to the ice mirror (therefore setting up the connection to Rehtul) gave me a hook to read on, but I felt you wasted a chance to start a little more creatively. While Rehtul boxed himself in a bit with his opener, I felt he did more with his first post more than you did.

You did much better when the two of you came face to face, during the fight and after. I felt I learned more about the actual connection between Felicity and Rehtul from your writing than your opponent. Obviously there is no feasible way that your whole history could be fleshed out over the course of a Citadel thread, but you gave me the bits I needed and made them colourful enough to hold my attention. Well done on this.

When it came to the final few posts, I found myself in two minds. You did very well in explaining to Rehtul current events, how that affected Felicity and re-establishing a connection with him, but the actual content towards the back of the thread threatened to turn into a muddle of old cliches that unfortunately have begun to stick to and (in my opinion) hold back Felicity. The whole “monster / self esteem / PTSD” internal conflict does lend itself very strongly to your persona, but it felt as if I wasn’t really seeing anything new with Felicity, like nothing had really progressed beyond the last few threads I’d read. I suppose the term I’d use is predictable, and again I think that with your level of skill and creativity you can definitely do more to drive her story forwards.

Rehtul, I say above that I felt you made the better start. I think it’s always harder to open a thread than to respond, and whilst training always feels like a convenient go-to and an often-overused trope in the Citadel, you did your best to make sure the reader got the most out of it. We not only saw why he was there to start with, but you also gave his continued participation in the Citadel some meaning. However, it would be nice to see (from ALL writers, and I include myself in that) a greater effort to escape the “training” themes of these types of thread.

The way you conveyed the relationship between Rehtul and Felicity was a mixed bag, in all honestly. You weren’t quite as good as Flamebird at telling the story of the past connection between you. Whilst there were some good snippets, I felt they weren’t as impactful or as detailed as your opponent, but you did much better than Flamebird in dealing with the present and providing the reader with valuable insight into the workings of Rehtul’s mind (especially given his own legacy as an Orlouge). Where Flamebird suffered from indulging in cliches, I felt you took a fresher approach and tried to shift the focus of the story more onto helping Felicity than producing an outpouring of Rehtul’s own insecurities. I felt Rehtul had progressed more and, for this reason, you scored slightly higher.

Flamebird, I liked your choice of arena. It felt whimsical and held potential for being something out of the ordinary. However, I felt that both you and Rehtul really struggled in this area throughout the remainder of the fight and this is reflected within your scores. My first issue was that the pair of you had different understandings of the locale, with Rehtul believing it to be a subterranean setting whilst your earlier post made clear it was outdoors (“Many shadow colors danced on the forest floor as sunlight filtered beneath the shrooms delightful canopies.”). This, in fairness, is Rehtul’s weakness but I also believe that some responsibility lies with Flamebird here because no post afterwards took any steps to correct that misunderstanding, despite him mentioning it two more times. Consistency was also a problem. In some posts, the mushroom forest was depicted to be radiant / luminous, and in others dark and shadowy. Where I think you both agreed was the swamp-like consistency of the ground.

Your combined actual use of the setting wasn’t great, and even threadbare in parts. I think there were perhaps one or two occasions where one of you had been slammed into a mushroom or used it to right yourself, perhaps pulling yourself out of the swamp, but other than that the rest of your posts refer mostly to the forest as a whole or the mud without actually using any of it. Most of the time I had little to no idea of where either of you were in relation to either one another or the scenery and it felt like you were operating in a bit of a void.

Remember, to score well in setting, a writer must go beyond painting backdrops. Setting is not just to look at. It exists to be experienced by the characters, and through them, by the readers. I know that the both of you will likely be seething at this score, as you are far, far better than this one thread (and this commentary) would portray, but this really was a bad day at the office for both of you. I’m happy to discuss any concerns you may have with anything mentioned here.

With regards to pacing, The start of the thread was very poor and is primarily responsible for taking a chunk out of both of your scores, which prevented it from hitting a 5 – 6 score. In post two, Flamebird had entered the arena and was waiting for Rehtul to make his appearance, which he did in post three. It then took an additional FOUR posts between you for the actual battle to start. I think there was about a post’s worth of solid character development in that gap, which I’ve given credit for, but I felt that it was (probably unintentionally) too stretched out.

The thread then pressed ahead with some quick and enjoyable action. Even when the battle ended and you both transitioned to more of a story, the pace did not stagnate immediately, nor move too quickly. Where it did struggle to keep me engaged was around the post 21 – 28 mark.

I felt Rehtul did a better job with keeping his posts consistent and free of un-necessary elongation. Flamebird, I must stress that I think at times you give the reader some really quality content, but at the same time (because of the nature of your writing and your strength of persona) you tend to smother your writing in an overwhelming number of emotions. As a result, there’s quite a lot to process and it does tend to impact heavily on the flow, post to post. This was the case here, to a degree.

My advice here to both of you is to carefully consider the type of story you are telling. Avoid posts which are un-necessarily long-winded and be mindful of posting anything which adds little to the story or gives your partner very little to work with (I think to some degree this was the problem at the start). Make your posts fit the story, and try to match each scene’s mood. Remember, whether more reserved or raging quick, your posts should aim to move the story along at a sustainable and believable speed.


Character

Communication: Flamebird 7 / Rehtul 5
Action: Flamebird 5 / Rehtul 7
Persona: Flamebird 8 / Rehtul 7

Total: Flamebird 20/30 / Rehtul 19/30


Flamebird, communication and persona are areas where I thought you stood apart. You have a real grasp of Felicity’s character and how she communicates, but also understand the timing and placement required to make dialogue effective. For example, the first rule of communication is that the dialogue must be sensible and believable between characters. Her thoughts are to the point, plot relevant and are often designed to emphasize an important event. You mostly avoid falling into the trap of too much dialogue during battle, and what you do have Felicity say fits well into her persona.

Rehtul, comparatively your score isn’t bad. I must stress that there are times when your dialogue really sustains the content and the pacing of the thread, especially towards the end in posts 21-28, but the reason your score doesn’t hit the same heights is that you talk far too much. Often, this is done at times that don’t make sense.

An example of this can be taken from post three:

"Hm, well... Where plants fear to tread, fungi will often take their place. They don't necessarily require direct sunlight to grow, so it comes as little surprise that they'd be able to grow easily in a subterranean environment like this one. Though that does beg the question..." Rehtul trailed of as he looked in every possible direction for a wall or roof.
I found myself thinking “Who is he talking to? What is the relevance of this dialogue?”. If this had been an internal monologue or general introspection, it might have not been as jarring but I would have again been asking the question as to whether the dialogue itself actually contributed to your character. You also have a bad habit of talking to yourself A LOT, mid battle. Introspection and quick, relevant thoughts often help accentuate fast paced combat. There is nothing wrong with the offhanded spoken remark either, but full lines of dialogue to yourself mid-flow really detract from the overall pacing and feel of the thread. I’m afraid it’s in this respect that Flamebird got the better of you.

My advice is this; match the amount and content of your dialogue to the situation. In a fight, you wouldn’t have time to ramble as much as if you were idle, and you’d be far more likely to think something quick than say it.

Action was one of the stronger categories, although (as previously mentioned), pacing struggled a little bit with the overall up-and-down approach to the thread.

Felicity, first things first. I love reading your fights. There were moments in the fight of real intelligence and strategy, such as the poison arrows. You take hits well, you stay creative and the fight didn’t descend into the hack and slash I so often see.

However, I do have some issues. Firstly, given the clever thinking behind your poison arrow idea, I didn’t understand why you dropped your bow at the start of the thread upon seeing Rehtul’s ice blade. The idea that it would “end the fight too quickly” seemed at odds with the next sentence that you’d “stick to what you were good at”. Surely, if the bow was your most efficient tool in this situation (as you’d implied), THAT would be the thing you were good at? Given that Felicity doesn’t know what Rehtul is capable of, it just seemed out of place.

The second thing I picked up may seem small and petty (that isn’t my intention), but I felt needed highlighting as there are implications in competitive RP which I will explain:

The ice, regardless of its strength, was already melting upon the heat generated by Felicity's radiation.
I’m assuming here you are referring to the shard that Rehtul had thrown and had gotten stuck in your arm, but that is not explicitly stated. A point of order here; I am certain there was no intention to powergame, but please remember that your powers in PvP do have to stack up to your approved profile. As far as I can see, there’s nothing there to say that your nuclear power can melt ice of ANY strength:

Quote Originally Posted by Felicity Level 8 profile
If anyone gets close to it, the cloak can burn and melt hair, fur, feathers, clothing and leather; metals and woods can heat up intensely. it will cause second degree burns on flesh - and third degree burns with prolonged closeness. If anyone makes physical contact with the cloak itself, they can experience severe, painful burns, skin melting, and deterioration. This cloak lasts up until time runs out. After the cloak leaves and Berserk Mode turns off, Felicity may experience memory fog or complete loss of memory from when the power was activated.
My biggest issue here is the denial of an opportunity for Rehtul to either defend the melting (remember, his ice is enchanted and could be protected in some way) and / or re-use that ice in another way. Remember, you’re dealing with a school user who has control over that ice shard. He would have been within his rights to complain that he didn’t have the chance to defend the melting (he didn’t, which I am taking into consideration).

Rehtul, the same compliments I gave to Flamebird also apply to you. When you got down to it, you were intelligent, fair with your hits (given and taken) and employed a great deal of lateral thinking. I liked how Rehtul slowly deduced the nature of Felicity’s abilities, and also employed what he had learned in his prior defeat to try and become much more flexible. If I have a criticism, it boils down to the connection with communication; Rehtul talks TFM (I’ll let you figure out the abbreviation) mid battle. Not all of it was jarring, but the majority of his waffle just doesn’t fit the circumstances.

Prose

Mechanics: Flamebird 7 / Rehtul 8
Clarity: Flamebird 6 / Rehtul 5
Technique: Flamebird 6 / Rehtul 5

Total: Flamebird 19/30 / Rehtul 18/30

When it came to the mechanics of the thread, there were a few minor issues but nothing I would describe as life changing and therefore I’m not going to harp on too much here.

Felicity, your spelling was mostly spot on, save for a couple of typos. On one occasion you wrote “an” as “and” (“In and instant, she jumped from the mud.”). There were a couple of grammatical issues as well.

Rehtul, your spelling was absolutely spot on (not a foot wrong). Your grammar was slightly off in some instances, and it mostly involved sentences which needed commas. Sentence fragmentation is probably one of the most common literary issues on the site. (“"So everyone knows of my shame, then?" he asked in tones dripping with venomous intent.” – there should be a comma after the “so”.)

I’m really not going to delve too much more into this, as it was clear you’d both made an effort to spellcheck your work, and the grammatical issues were more by omission than misunderstanding. The difference in score represents the amount of errors each. Good work to the both of you.

For the most part, both of your posts made sense. I could comprehend what was going on, your sentences clearly described events and logically followed one another. Your clarity score was mostly affected by the disappointing situation with the setting, because despite knowing what was happening, I had no idea where it was happening. Out of the two of you, Flamebird was probably the most concise with what was left whereas Rehtul’s score was particularly affected here.

Technique was OK; you both have a good grasp of foreshadowing, metaphors, and allusion. I think the fluency of the writing was what separated you both. Rehtul, I felt your writing was a bit “stop-start”. You tended to use short sentences with full stops, rather than attempt to create more fluent sentences. I felt that whilst this improved your clarity, it made your writing seem a little robotic and didn’t flow as naturally or as fluently as Flamebird’s.

Wildcard

Flamebird 7 / Rehtul 7

I love a good battle, and despite what must seem as a bit of a hammering at times in the commentary above I did enjoy spending time on this thread. I enjoyed the fight between you both, and the character development afterwards. It was a long thread and clearly you'd both put your hearts into it. I hope my feedback helps to identify the areas where you can improve, but also to celebrate what you both did excellently as well.

Final scores

Flamebird: 59 / 100
Rehtul: 57 / 100

Flamebird wins!

Rewards

Flamebird receives 2,363 EXP and 320 GP!

Rehtul Orlouge receives 675 EXP and 160 GP!