Silk in the Snow [Plot Submission]

[Blackwater]

Plot Title/Link: Silk in The Snow
Marine Mission Rank/Number: N/A
Mission Number: N/A
Total Number of Posts: 71
Plot Summary: A pirate has been captured and taken to B-2 of South Blue. A young boy searching for nothing more than new herbs to add to what will one day be a legendary apothecary. Like so many random instances these two cross paths in explosive an unexpected manner. Enmeshed in a plot by the son of an island-native innkeeper, Tang Long finds himself heading a mission to stop Bray Greer’s mad plan to turn all marines into mindless monsters and as a fringe benefit—breaking Jack Dancer out of jail! A series of battles including the defeats of Commanders Asama and Fukudu, Ensign Shoutei Soshi, and most notably that of Commodore Futsuka Yoi have shaken South Blue to its core. Aided by a few of the town’s most celebrated members Tang and Jack fight their way to freedom after engaging all the might of the World Government and simultaneously saving it from almost certain destruction. Thousands of lives are lost, important figureheads are deposed, and the Vice Admiral is forced to step in order to save face. Even against these odds Jack Dancer escapes B-2 in a path carved by fire and carnage.
While one chapter closes another begins. Tang Long has accepted a diverging path that leads him in the footsteps of Jack Dancer and unbeknownst to the pair, Vice Admiral Mozambia has made it a personal mission that Jack Dancer be executed for what has been done to his base. Where will their journeys take them and how long can they avoid capture while remaining in the Blues?

Lasting Effects: Ensign Shoutei Soshi of the B-2 base lost his left arm in a duel with Jack Dancer and harbors the most hatred for both Jack and Tang Long—a hate so strong he’ll do anything to become powerful enough to defeat them. In his escape Jack lost his right eye courtesy of the Vice Admiral, but the pirate destroyed a total of 2 battleships, 3 destroyers, defeated/slayed over 1000 marines to his credit, and more importantly defeated the two Destroyer Captains Sora Fukudu and Asama Icarus as well as the ‘marine hero’ Commodore Futsuka Yoi. Most notably the marines have placed the biological attack of their base upon the head of Jack Dancer in the hopes that the man’s increasing notoriety will get him killed.

Pirate Crew: N/A
Pirate Name/Link: Tang Long
Current Bounty: 0
Number of Posts: 36
EXP: 0 / 100

Pirate Crew: N/A
Pirate Name/Link: Jack Dancer
Current Bounty: 93 Million Beli
Number of Posts: 35
EXP: 1531 / 3000

[White Mimic]

Pretty long... I may need a bit but I'll try to hurry it up so you guys can get back in the game as soon as possible.

[Kurosaki]

Wanted to make a correction on what Mim said. Black and Jack do not have to wait to continue on in their rping experience for the thread to be graded. Thought I'd clear that up in case there was a misunderstanding. Seeing as how this thread is taking a while to grade.

[White Mimic]

-------->Bonuses!

Shared:

Plus:

Cooperative Pacing: One of the first big things I noticed. Absolutely perfect. You didn’t immediately meet which is usually how threads start nowadays, and I can appreciate that. Particularly, having two initially separate parties come together after their own exposition and not even within the first page of posting. It’s always refreshing to see two people work together when their characters have no idea of the other, so to speak. Good work.

General Style: I don’t usually make comments on this but god damn if this wasn’t an engaging read. At parts, I’ll admit things got slow or perhaps a teensy bit clumsy, but overall you guys did really well. You spent appropriate amounts of time on descriptions, maintained the focus, and overall I wasn’t explicitly bored at any point in the work. You both have style and structure that I personally, as a grader, would attribute to a veteran author. Granted, I won’t say you perfectly fit the ideal I have, and there is some room for refinement, but for the purposes of a Role-Playing forum, you guys are in top-notch form.

Extra Notes: Generally, I have an entire list of Pluses and Minuses but you guys kinda broke my mold and I don’t have specific things to point out for criticism and praise. Either everything is great, or very few things are bad. I wouldn’t let it go to your head though, I’m sure if I wasn’t frightened of keeping you waiting any longer (how rude of me), I could put together an entire essay reviewing this thread. No essays though. Done with school for the summer.

Minus:

Note: As before, I have very little bad things to say about this. Only individual things.

Tang Long: 5/5

I’ll be honest, your style has garnered you a lot of points and your technical role-playing is fairly strong. If this were a stricter system, however, I wouldn’t be giving any top scores, so rather than taking the following as strong criticism, jut regard it as stuff to keep in mind next time.

Plus:

As I said above, your overall writing and pacing are very good. I’m not even joking, this is much better than the forum average and you should be proud of what you can write. There’s not much I can point out specifically since it’s all quite good but I’ll do my best.

Your world building at the start of the thread was very strong and it persisted throughout the remainder of the thread. It must take some real skill to integrate description into story well, because it’s not often you see it handled well here. Either description is left a bit dry (referring to myself shamelessly) or it’s put on a pedestal while the story, or even merely the action, has to wait in line while the stationary setting finishes showboating. Luckily, you did neither. Way to describe things while also doing stuff.

The growth of your character projected against the character of Soshi was a rather nice touch, particularly in how you handled your engagements with him. I’d normally say that a single thread is too short a time period to make this kind of leap in development, by which I mean the gradient from your initial defeat to your eventual victory, but given the length and sheer density of the thread, I have an exception to the rule on my hands. That being said, slight critique, the thread, if I was paying attention, takes course over 2 or 3 days. There was a bit in the beginning (with the being in bed when stuff goes down) that kind of threw me for a loop and I’m sure it’s 2 days but allow me to be pragmatic. So regarding your characters combat development against Soshi, feels a bit more like your defeat came from disadvantage more than a comparison of actual skill, though a quick review of the incident would say that this isn’t the case. All in all, I’d say the feeling is a bit dissonant for me, but regardless, I like the aesthetic of the two rivals.

Unfortunately, I’m more the critical type so that plus sorta came out like a minus, but really you did a good job. Pay no mind that this next section is longer. Just stuff to help you improve.

Minus:

Your characters emotional investment in everything seemed a bit flat, which isn’t to say your emotional reactions weren’t okay, you did react and, from what I could understand of Tang, you reacted appropriately. However, to be fair, the things you wrote as they related to your characters reactions more often than not felt tied in with your characters mentality and not their heart, if that makes sense. By the end, you got better so I think you realized you were doing this? If not, I’d say the best solution is to give a quick elaboration on an emotion your character feels whenever they feel it. Whenever the emotional state of your character was brought up, it was usually for a single phrase or word before you got contemplative of your surroundings or yourself. This is fine to do, there are people like that and it is a legitimate manner of thinking, but at the same time, it’s a show-not-tell situation. A little more elaboration and you’ll be made all the stronger a writer for it. Or not, I struggle with this sort of thing all the time in my own writing, so who am I to judge.

Second, while your cooperative pacing with Jack was spot on, your guys’ initial separation makes you all the more responsible for individual pacing. And I won’t lie, as strong as your pacing actually is, there were a few spots of what I felt were clumsiness. Earliest example I can think of is when you were in your room with the gang. I understand the waiting but, and this relates to the emotional investment above, not enough focus was given to the tension which made the subsequent happenings feel awkward and the pacing feel uneven with the story. With the way it was written, the action of downstairs and the following arrest that was made felt like they came out of nowhere and they really didn’t in retrospect of the rest of the story. However, it helps when the lead into loud noises, arrests, and action like this is either a large focus on the tension you briefly mentioned, or a chattering setting you described without said tension (like a dinner party or something, I dunno). This may be my own stringent ideals of aesthetic which I try to keep quiet in grading but, yeah, felt a bit dissonant.

So, all in all my biggest recommendation is to focus on Tang’s emotions a little more, and try to gauge when it’s appropriate to disregard them, or make them the looking glass through which everything happens, by which I mean, focus on them, subtly if possible (you don’t have any glaring issues with subtlety that I can see just yet).

Jack Dancer: 5/5

Plus:

Did you know I based a section of my ‘badass grading ladder’ after you? Generally, when people struggle with badassery, it’s because of cliché’s they’ve set their own characters to or their unwillingness to admit that they aren’t actually the best people at what they do. You’ve become one of the positive examples of a badass. True to your history, you’ve shown you still have the tendency to fight fair (in a PvE/PvP sense), even if you have the class advantage. When I read the summary and saw that you basically destroyed 5 ships, defeated countless marines, and essentially leveled a marine base, I’ll admit I was a little shocked in a not-so-good way (more on this below). But at the same time I noticed you had severely crippled your character via eye removal and that takes some serious humility, or ideas for future developments. I certainly would like to see how this alters the path of the legendary Jack Dancer. Not many characters would allow something so severe to happen to their characters (Even I wouldn’t until they had seen a good deal of story to make it more poignant). Kudos to your ability to take so large a bullet.

On a lesser scale of admiration, your interactions with Tang were quite nice, even if a bit predictable thanks to Jack’s archetype. On some level, characters should develop in some manner in each arc they’re in, and the hills of your relationships with others seems to be an interesting point of your development, particularly in building up trust with others once again after the Dancing Blades debacle. While you clearly haven’t warmed up to Tang yet, I’m sure there’s something in the future, perhaps along the lines of alliance or betrayal. Enough stuff happened in the thread to properly back up either.

Minus:

Jack, you know I admire you, and respect you, but I have a real issue with your use of scale here. Not, like, a beef or anything but just hear me out. It’s not even a real problem I suppose, because you’re well within your abilities as a character and a writer to do whatever, but this is a big thing. Now of course, your approach to scale from a writing standpoint is perfectly fine given the power of your character, but from a roleplaying standpoint, your actions have some severe implications for the forum as a whole. That being the implication that given enough power, someone can level an army and its strongholds (alongside the fact that a marine base was basically destroyed). While this is true in One Piece, I wouldn’t expect anyone to actually exercise this ability except in the instance of desperation or high stakes playing. Of course, I’d say this applies to one of those considering it’s the break out of one of the forums strongest and most notorious, and you did, y’know, cripple yourself, so like I said I’m not making a big issue of this, hopefully. I just want make sure that you aren’t planning on making a habit of this (I trust your writing skill so I’m sure this is unnecessary, I’m just trying to be sure).

Since this is within your characters abilities and, having RP’d with Jack before, in character, I’m not taking any points off. Just be careful okay?

Other than that, you’re both fairly well off. Good work.

Totals and Endzone!

---->Tang Long: 0 + 360 = 360; Level-Up (D-Rank), +20.000.000 Bounty for assisting in breaking Jack Dancer out of Marine Captivity and association

---->Jack Dancer: 1531 + 350 = 1881; Bounty Reinstated (93.000.000), Blues Bounty Ceiling Reached - Priority raised for breaking out of captivity, assault on marines (mass scale), destruction of marine property, destruction of 5 Marine vessels


Please update your profiles!

Thanks for your patience. I shouldn't have taken something like this until I was out of school, but hopefully, no bad blood. Good work you two.

Also, a note of thank you to Kuro for making the ruling of your continuation official. Coulda sworn I at least told Jack that you guys were good to go in a PM but perhaps I'm wrong. Anyway, it wasn't publicly noted.