[Submission] Railway Rhumba

[EriChar]

Plot Title/Link: Railway Rhumba
Total Number of Posts: 61
Plot Summary: A mere plot that takes place on the sea train.
Having boarded the train is St Poplar, Samba Deflor and her new friend Ffion Van Pierre travel to Water Seven by rail, discussing the nature of Devil Fruits and the young scientists desire to cure their affliction. Unknown to them, Puffing Tom is also carrying a number of problematic passengers who happen to be undercover Revolutionaries, as well as an attractive femme fatale by the name of Olivia who is seeking to fleece one of the riders of his considerable wealth. Train brought to a halt by off all things a cow on the line, the sea king sized monster leaves the passengers vulnerable to the approach of a Revolutionary vessel, and along with their ‘plant’ passengers, the group quickly take the cars over. Seeking a precious artefact that mercenaries and plan clothes marines led by a powerhouse named Levante have been trying to covertly move to Enies Lobby, a fierce battle breaks out between the two forces with the girls and the passengers caught in the middle.

Irked by this outcome, Samba decides to lead the innocents to safety, and begins to lead a charge toward the front of the train with civilians in tow to protect them from the battle at the back. After some fierce words and a dip in the ocean, Miss Deflor makes a shaky alliance with the mercenary bride on board, and the pair defend the civilians from revolutionary guardsmen looking to make them all hostages. Our mermaid heroine taking her own course, Ffion seeks to remove the obstacle of the Sea Cow on the line so the train can get moving again, and succeeds in cooking up a peppery mixture that sends the living obstruction sneezing across the ocean. Innocents brought to the forward carriages; a sudden sense of hope is lost when the commander of the Revolutionaries ruthlessly tries to force their objective in exchange for the lives of the people on board. Korita Tamaru’s battleship bearing down on the people, Olivia heads to it and with the timely aid of the vampire squid, disables it’s gunners and prevents the train from bombardment.

The dancer herself enraged and severely disillusioned by the conflicting forces equal disregard for the safety of the people at large, dashes toward the battle and catches the revolutionary commander as he tries to escape, injured by Levante in the skirmish earlier on. Deciding to take no side on this battle other than her own and that of those who fear it, Samba delivers first a verbal then a physical smackdown on the wounded man, achieving a narrow but brutal victory over a foe ordinarily stronger than her. Finding the artefact and assuming it was a mere toy, the golden haired girl snatches it away to play with and has a brief encounter with the mercenary leader before returning to her ‘team’, all three worse for wear after an intense battle. Inspired by her earlier feeling of justness and desire to live outside the deceptive doctrines of others, Miss Deflor asks that Ffion and Olivia join her in creating an independent group to battle the forces of ‘evil’ in the future, and more or less enlists their help. Now looking forward to what lay ahead, the girls eagerly await their arrival in Water Seven, and the adventure that waits for them there…

Pirate Crew: Fever Pirates
Pirate Name/Link: Samba Deflor
Current Bounty: 0
Number of Posts: 21
EXP: 250/500
What percentage of bonus exp do you want as Poinz?: None, make it all exp.

Pirate Crew: Fever Pirates
Pirate Name/Link: Ffion Van Pierre
Current Bounty: 0
Number of Posts: 20
EXP: 190/500
What percentage of bonus exp do you want as Poinz?: 100%

Pirate Crew: Fever Pirates
Pirate Name/Link: Olivia
Current Bounty: 0
Number of Posts: 20
EXP: 100/500
What percentage of bonus exp do you want as Poinz?: None! All exp.

[Mr. Moshypocrite McSlowbro]

Sorry for the delay folks! Been sick as a dog. Now then, without further ado...

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

Samba Deflor (Char) -- 5/5

SPOILER: Click to show

The Good:

[/b]: You know you're damn good writer, why do I have to sit here and compliment you. Ffff.

Saucy Samba: Okay fine, sheesh. Samba is delightful. A fiery slip of a girl whose appearance hides a fierce passion. You do an excellent job characterizing her, not just in speech or action, but in the entirety of the post. From her observations, to the little quips she makes to herself, to the vocabulary you use. Better still, it's not the Mary Sue style of excellence where she is simply good at everything. She is well rounded character with her own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. And I'm not talking about sinking in water.

Fantastic Writing: I want you to do something right now. Go read one of your posts near the middle of the thread. Then read one from Vio and Neb. In particular, look for similarity. You'll find them. Why? Because your writing is so damn impressive that the other people in this thread are literally striving to emulate you in an effort to improve themselves. How do I know? Because all three of you have the exact same errors. Obviously each writer has their unique style, but it's honestly pretty evident that your flow is leaking over into their posts. I need to do some research and see if this is a universal occurrence in other threads, where posters start to mimic one another, or if this is a phenomenon unique to Char and his Char-isma. Don't let it go to your head though.[/ul]

The Bad:

[/b]: We've already spoken on this issue. They're bad at the start, but clear up by the end. Improvement is always the goal here, so I am not going to hold a problem someone has already fixed against them.

Run-On Sentences:

SPOILER: Click to show

I thought that removing the semicolon issue would solve this one, but apparently it runs a bit deeper than that. I'm going to paste a line from one of your posts from the end of the thread.

"Mind instilled with the urge to act to protect herself, rather than keep counting on others to save her, as she gasped and drew air into her lungs now that her throat was no longer compressed by a nasty mitt, the young woman seemed to act on instinct, her hands stretching upward while the knees below curled underneath."

That is bare minimum two sentences merged into one long, awkward one. Even worse it jumps back and forth so much that it is really hard to follow. There are a lot of these I've noticed peppered pretty much everywhere. I -think- this is a writing issue and not a style issue, otherwise I would not comment on it. I'd suggest trying to break these statements down into more coherent chunks.

An 'issue' with using so called 'apostrophes': Another minor issue I've seen. I realize you are trying to place emphasis on certain words or convey an alternate meaning, something I use them for a lot myself. But they are pretty prominent. It doesn't really detract from anything in the same way that the run-on sentences do, but I wasn't sure whether or not you were aware of it.[/ul]

The Awesome:

[/font][/b] Whatever that made her she didn’t care, Samba would be an outlaw if they wanted to call her that, but she also would not sit silently while others suffered in front of her.
“You, or the World Government, if you wanna drag innocent people into your battles then I’ll kick both of your asses!”[/i][/ul][/spoiler]
Ffion Van Pierre (Vio) -- 4/5

SPOILER: Click to show

The Good:

[/b]: You completely fixed the overly-textbook inter monologue issue I mentioned in your last thread, and then went on to kick it up a notch on top of that. When I can get a really good sense of her personality without even reading the dialogue bits, you've done something right. This optimistic many-legged maiden is going places.

Great job with gestures, detailed actions: Particularly when conveying Ffion's emotional responses. That damn squid-girl is adorable at points.

Author Synchronization: Okay, I'm sorry to fill this slot with something silly, but it really is remarkable! Now that I'm paying attention to it, it seems like -everyone- does this. Mimicking eachother's writing patterns in a thread. It's actually really cool. When all the posters match their 'flow' so to speak, it's almost like you could take all three of your posts and move them into a single cohesive document. Even the newest crew member is doing it. I should write a paper on this phenomenon. Freakin' cool! [/ul]

The Bad:

[/b]: You've improved on this! Particularly with the addition of other NPCs. But it's still an issue when it comes to your main character. I really should remember to bring it up to you in chat at some point. Yes, it is much easier to spend the majority of your post reacting to the other person's actions. But doing that denies them that same luxury, and its ends up being a situation where one person is just towing the thread. This is incredible difficult to do, even for Char, and ain't much fun either. I realize that he is sort of controlling the thread and you might not want to do much to mess up his plan, but this is a collaborative effort! Do what you damn well please. Make him react to you, too. In case you haven't notice, Char doesn't even repost other character's dialogue in his posts in order to avoid being too reactionary. This is your biggest issue at the moment. I would not make such a big deal about it if I did not think it was important not just to your reader, but the rest of your crew! I think I'd be giving you a five if not for this.

Author Synchronization: Seems it works both ways. You've picked up some of Char's bad habits too. I'd be careful about overuse of doing 'this' sort of thing. There's a lot of unnecessary commas, which is a bad habit I'm trying to break myself out of as well. Some awkward sentences, but you're not nearly as bad as Char himself. You also straddle the line as far as overusing the same words over and over in close proximity, but it's not that bad.

Need more Ffion: So go submit another thread for me to read already >_>[/ul]

The Awesome:

[/b][/font][/i][/ul][/spoiler]

Olivia (Nebuneferu) -- 4/5

SPOILER: Click to show

The Good:

[/b]: Hey there Neb! Nice to meetcha. This is the first thread of yours I think I've read, and I am happy that I got to! Now I may be a strange one for this, but I've always thought it's better to show than tell. It's more interesting for a character to click their tongue in annoyance than for the author to just say 'the person is annoyed'. And you're great at showing! It may be partially because of the fact that Olivia is deaf that she notices all the small gestures in other people, which communicate emotion just as clearly as words themselves. Either way it makes for a great read.

Strong Internal Dialogue: Another character aspect that makes me want to keep reading is listening to their thoughts as they go about things. It really helps the reader sympathize with the person in question and their motivations. Plus, honestly, their thoughts are usually pretty funny. And anything that makes me laugh is generally a plus in my book.


...Kickass? Is that a valid point I can use?: Now, a deaf character isn't exactly groundbreaking. There are a few others floating around there. But usually their disability defines them. Most of what they say and do is limited by it, or my issues raised due to it. Olivia, though. She's a sexy kung-fu bride of kickassitude who'll beat the snot out of anyone who messes with her. When it comes up she's deaf, it's just in passing, no big deal. Honestly, this is a big deal, to me at least. The fact she's already overcome what would be a huge disability to anyone else just makes her seem really, really cool. You did a great job with that.
[/ul]

The Bad:

[/b]:

SPOILER: Click to show

This is a very pervasive issue throughout your work. That is to say, there are a lot of points where you switch from one tense to another within the same post, which is a pretty big problem. You don't see it very often because it's something that people don't think about when writing, it's just what sounds right. But from what I understand you might not be a native English speaker, so I can't really hold it against you (I hardly know English, can't imagine trying to write detailed posts in a second language!). So I am gonna explain a bit.

"Olivia tensed when the mermaid walked towards her. She is not very comfortable being around anybody in her weaken state, living alone for a while and surrounded by potential enemies does that to a person, especially in this dangerous sea."

"tensed" is the past-tense form of the word, tense. Okay, that is actually a really confusing example, but I am gonna continue with it anyway. Then in the next sentence you have 'is', which is present tense. 'weaken state' which I'm assuming was supposed to be 'weakened state' would have been past tense, so you've changed back again. See what I mean? You've referred to events as if they have already happened, and then suddenly you're talking like they are happening right now. So if we wanted to correct I might say:

"Olivia tensed as the young mermaid walked towards her. She was not very comfortable being around other people in her weakened state. Living alone, surrounded by nothing but potential enemies, can do to a person. Especially in a sea as dangerous as this."

Another example would be

Original: "She closed her eyes and shake her head furiously, and when she opened her eyes, she sees only the mermaid. Feeling slight tears forming at the edge of her eyes, she gave a deep breath, willing her tears to go away."

Corrected: "She closed her eyes and shook her head furiously. When she opened her eyes again, she saw only the mermaid. Feeling slight tears form at the edge of her eyes, she took a deep breath and willed them away."

Generally RP posts are done in past tense, but this is not always an iron-clad rule. I've seen some folks do a great job working in present tense. But basically I think it'd be good for you to figure out how you want to narrate events and stick to it. I'm sure Char and Vio would be more than willing to help you proofread your threads in the future, and you can definitely contact me if you want some help on the issue. I'm giving you a pass on this for the moment, but in the interest of me being an impartial judge I may have to take off points for tense issues in the future.

You do have other issues, but I think that this should be your main concern for the moment. You are an excellent writer, and I'd love to see how much you can improve in future threads.

[/ul]

The Awesome:

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Errors in Template:

N/A

Totals and Endzone!

    ---->Samba: 460/500(New Total EXP for Samba);
    Details:

SPOILER: Click to show

EXP at Time of Submission: 250 (Player 1's EXP at Time of Submission)
Base EXP Earned: 21(Number of Posts) * 5(For doing a Story Thread) = 105(Base EXP Earned)
Bonus EXP Earned: 21(Number of Posts) * 5(Quality Bonus) = 105(Bonus EXP Earned)
New EXP Total: 250(EXP at Submission) + 105(Base EXP) + 105(Bonus EXP) = 460(New Total EXP for Samba)

    ---->Ffion: 290/500(New Total EXP for Ffion) + 80 Poinz;
    Details:

SPOILER: Click to show

EXP at Time of Submission: 190(Player 2's EXP at Time of Submission)
Base EXP Earned: 20(Number of Posts) * 5(For doing a Story Thread) = 100(Base EXP Earned)
Bonus EXP Earned: 20(Number of Posts) * 4(Quality Bonus) = 80 (Poinz Earned at 100% Conversion)
New EXP Total: 190(EXP at Submission) + 100(Base EXP) = 290(New Total EXP for Ffion)

    ---->Olivia: 280/500(New Total EXP for Olivia);
    Details:

SPOILER: Click to show

EXP at Time of Submission: 100 (Player 2's EXP at Time of Submission)
Base EXP Earned: 20(Number of Posts) * 5(For doing a Story Thread) = 100(Base EXP Earned)
Bonus EXP Earned: 20(Number of Posts) * 4(Quality Bonus) = 80(Bonus EXP Earned)
New EXP Total: 100(EXP at Submission) + 100(Base EXP) + 80(Bonus EXP) = 280(New Total EXP for Olivia)

Please update your profiles!

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