[Submission] Tentacle Tango

[EriChar]

Plot Title/Link: First Dance: Tentacle Tango
Total Number of Posts: 37
Plot Summary: A tale of evening disappointment, two girls have a sour experience on a ‘party ship’ and come out fighting. Samba Deflor enters the evening in her best dress, hoping to find friends and maybe even romance as she is invited by a handsome lad to a party on his boat, but is horrified by her discovery. Punch spiked by knockout drops, even our daring dancer falls victim to a dose, and soon finds her head spinning while surrounded by men with less than wholesome intentions. Meanwhile, below deck, Ffion van Pierre, a mermaid who had fallen victim to the same treatment on a night before this awakens to find her body bound by rope, and her head swimming from the toxin.

As the two girls fight for survival, more by luck than judgement they run into each other, and Samba is saved a sleepy fate herself by the quick thinking and medical expertise of her new mermaid ally. The poison routed from their systems, the girls lead the charge in freeing all who have fallen victim to these nefarious males and their plot, with Samba drawing the attention that only a Carnivalan Dancer could, while the skilled medic rouses the dozens of ladies incapacitated in the ships bowels. Fighting off droves of opponents, Samba’s strength fails her against the last ‘boss’, almost meeting a grisly fate if not for a timely rescue by the very girls she sought to save, who make quick and bloody work of the chief attacker in an act of aggressive avenging.

Having passed out from exhaustion, Samba wakes to find herself in a hotel with Ffion, and after baring a little of her soul and a lot of her body, the dancer manages to convince her aquatic friend to keep her company on their next trip, and the duo set off in excitement, ignorant of the dark shadows that have gathered because of their actions…

Pirate Crew: Fever Pirates
Pirate Name/Link: Samba Deflor
Current Bounty: N/A
Number of Posts: 19
EXP: 155/500
What percentage of bonus exp do you want as Poinz?: 100%

Pirate Crew: Fever Pirates
Pirate Name/Link: Ffion van Pierre
Current Bounty: N/A
Number of Posts: 18
EXP: 100/500
What percentage of bonus exp do you want as Poinz?: 100%

[Mr. Moshypocrite McSlowbro]

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Bit of a personal aside here. I really enjoyed reading this thread! I felt like you both did an excellent job of expressing your respective character's struggles. Their personalities felt particularly vibrant for some reason. Let me know when you submit threads in the future, I do very much want to keep up with the Fever Pirates.

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-------->Individual Ratings!

Samba Deflor (Char) -- 5/5

SPOILER: Click to show

'No longer alone...'

The Good:

[/b]: Amusing alliteration abounds, acommpanied by an awe-inspiring assortment of adjectives. Great description of the enviroment around you, of Samba herself, and the other cast members. And I think I laughed at 'a lot of hoot within this nanny' longer than I should have.

Clear and edifying inner dialouge: You've actually made me a bit jealous, here. One of the things I've been working on lately, with varying degrees of sucess, is integrating my character's personality into the entire post rather than just their inner/outer dialogue. The way you go about describings things is, well. Very Samba-esque. I approve.

Excellent overall writing: You know dang well what this means. The whole dream sequence, or flashback, or whatever you'd call it? Cool formatting, evoked emotion in the reader (Me), and gave some great insight into Samba herself. Not to mention explained some of the thoughts she had in earlier posts. There are a few posters out there who make me laugh. I think you're the first to make me genuinely sad. Overall, damn good work.[/ul]

The Bad:

[/b]:

SPOILER: Click to show

I have never noticed you doing this before, so I am not sure if this is something you did intentionally or something you just developed. But you are constructing these huge run on sentences using a combination of semicolons and commas, thus the joke at the start of this line. Hit Ctrl + F and search for ';', there are 64 on the first page of the thread. An average of 8 of this type of sentence per post. It is done consistenly across all three pages. Here's a good example:

'Leaning a little closer, forgetting some of her caution from earlier on and instead having herself be overpowered by curiosity, as her lips pursed into a gawk of amazement, the slightly battered blonde peeked through the dim light at the mantle of the girl before her; beginning to recognize that the ‘dress’ was no mere piece of cloth, and rather some strange arrangement of limbs.'

Unless I am missing a period in there somewhere, that is one single sentence. And it is hellalong. If this is part of your writing style rather than a flaw, let me know. But I think it makes for really awkward passages of text.

Some issues with adverbs: This is something that results from your descriptiveness. Of course, the flowing language is delightful to read, but on occasion I feel like you push too many '-ly''s into too small an area. I'd be cautious of that in the future.

Issues with shifting tenses: I think this comes into play when you're being particularly poetic. You shift tenses from one sentence to the next, a time or two in the same one. Not that glaring of an issue, but you did not leave many flaws for me to pick at.[/ul]

The Awesome:

[/font][/b][/i][/ul][/spoiler]
Ffion van Pierre (Vio) -- 4/5

SPOILER: Click to show

'The Courage to do what is right...'

The Good:

[/b]: Dang! Small admission here. I grade mostly based off my initial impressions, unless some big curveball comes up. And my intitial impression here is that you do your character's actions really well. Particularly the minutiae of the movements of Fifi's tentacles, but it also comes into play during combat. Great job!

The five senses: This might sound weird, but it's another general feeling I've got rather than a thing I can pin down. You do senses really well. Your focus a lot on Fifi's sense of touch, tossing in sight and hearing from time to time. And I find that really interesting. Telling the reader that the night was brisk is one method of conveying information. But having your character shiver, having them feel the cold is a different matter entirely. Considering that the character is how we (Readers) will percieve the world, I feel like approaching things in this manner makes it feel more like a first-person experience rather than third-person.

Step-by-step thought process: I've said it before, and I know I'll say it again. Of equal importance to a character's actions is the reason for their actions. And you make it very clear why this young lady does what she does just before she does it. Which makes the reader feel way more invovled in the post. More interested. Good stuff![/ul]

The Bad:

[/b]: Okay, this is a fine line. On one hand, your posts are somewhat short in comparison to Char's (I've been in threads with him too, I know it can be hard), so I do not want to tell you to shave more off. On the other hand, the way you present information at times seems really... textbook. For example, 'Ffion was a vampire squid mermaid and, as such, possessed naturally low stamina and endurance. She could never hope to match the speed and strength of other fishmen and merfolk, but still possessed a degree of inhuman ability.' I am not sure about you, but that is not at all how I sound inside of my own skull. While I know you are just trying to share information with the reader, these passages just sound really out of place in the middle of the post. I'd suggest either rephrasing them in order for them to sound more like thoughts, dropping them out in some places, or maybe making this part of her personality? That is, slipping randomly from normal speech into a sort of 'lecture mode' when explaining a topic. Or something like that.

Run on sentences: Haha! This makes me chuckle a bit. I noticed as this thread went further on, your writing style started matching that of your posting partner. Which I think is actually pretty cool. I'm going to have to check other people's threads and see if it happens elsewhere too. With that said, you managed to copy one of Char's flaws too: Run on sentences. In combat, or when many things are happening at once, you start stringing together what could have been three distinct statements into a single long one. I suffer from an excess of commas myself, at times.

Lack of enviromental description: Okay, this is what I mentioned earlier. You do a great job of describing Fifi, but you do so at the cost of everything else. You walked through the town without mentioning the time of day, weather, the size of the city, blah blah blah. Any of those would have helped. But a better example would be how your described Samba. If I excluded Char's posts and just read yours, all I would know about Samba is that she is blond and trim. I would have thought you'd mention that you were both around the same age, or given how easily the mermaid blushed, the rather revealing dress that Samba was wearing. Something minor detail like that. On the other hand, Char goes into a good bit of detail about Fifi. Even if it was just for the 'feeling her up' gag.[/ul]

The Awesome:

[/b][/font] She had made up her mind. "If you need me, then I'll help!"[/i][/ul][/spoiler]
Errors in Template:

N/A

Totals and Endzone!

    ---->Samba Deflor: 250/500 and 95 Poinz (With a 100% Poinz Conversion);
    Details:

SPOILER: Click to show

EXP at Time of Submission: 155/500
Base EXP Earned: 19(Number of Posts) * 5(For doing a Story Mission) = 95(Base EXP Earned)
Bonus EXP Earned: 19(Number of Posts) * 5(Quality Bonus) = 95(Total Poinz Earned) 
New EXP Total: 155(EXP at Submission) + 95(Base EXP) = 250/500(New Total EXP)

    ---->Ffion van Pierre: 190/500 and 72 Poinz (With a 100% Poinz Conversion);
    Details:

SPOILER: Click to show

EXP at Time of Submission: 100/500
Base EXP Earned: 18(Number of Posts) * 5(For doing a Story Mission) = 90(Base EXP Earned)
Bonus EXP Earned: 18(Number of Posts) * 4(Quality Bonus) = 72(Total Poinz Earned)
New EXP Total: 100(EXP at Submission) + 90(Base EXP) = 190(New Total EXP)

Please update your profiles!

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