NLBFT 12: The First Round Beckons

[Repster]

Inferno, please. For flame's sake. Frankenstein is NOT an insult. It's a term. A term used to describe hybrids. It may not sound very nice, but that's what it is. I've seen Frankensteins be praised for the glory and awesomeness before.

Kargarth's words were exactly as follows. which you quoted yourself.
"stop using script form."

It's a suggestion, not an order that should be used. If you read more then just those words to "It's lazy, it's poor form and it's no good to read."and THOUGHT about it, maybe you'd realize something. Novels, fairy tales, stories, etc are not written in script. Scripts are written in Script. One just draws you in better then the other.

Mind you, if you want to go for a script format, I will defend your right to do so.

"Inferno, please read carefully."
Always good advice.

"Your use of what is essentially a Frankenstein's monster of fancharacters severely detracts from your piece."

An opinion. You know, the kind of stuff you need to expect when you volunteer to BE JUDGED!

" Furthermore, it negatively affects you, as you rely on the reader knowing about Dragon Ball, and you truncate descriptions whilst just waving in the direction of DBZ as if that's some sort of replacement."

It DOES negatively affect you, as you DO rely on the reader knowing about dragon ball, you DO truncate description while just waving in the direction of DBZ.

Lemme just quote as example of that...

Inferno took a stance in the sky very familiar to those who have faced the saiyan Goku. a ball of Dragonfire and a ball of Ki appeared in his hands, resisting each other until forced together to create a fused ball of dragonfire ki.

ZOMG I TOTALY STANDZ LEIKE TEH GOKUZ!ONE!!!111!
*ahem*
That right there is what went threw my mind when I read that. Then, "Who the bloody flame is Goku? Oh, right...that guy."

Seriously Inferno. Quite being such an emo little bugger thinking everything negative in anyway is targeted straight towards you as in insult.

Are we going to have to add in a legal clause o the tournament that states
"By joining this tournament you will be judged. BEWARE, judging involves opinions and criticisms on your character, and writting style."

[Saria Dragon of the Rain Wilds]

You're all pretty hideous when you get on your elitist pedestal. Did you know that? Yeah. It's disgusting to read.

Man, I can't wait for the day when the battlefielders actually tell people to gtfo of their forum. That's about the time this place with come crashing down among brimstone and flame. Oh, history, they cannot learn from you. I remember the RE Forum. I remember.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

SD stop preaching. You may have been leniant verbally but you didn't exactly give him very much to go on if he wants to improve, and your score wasn't anything to bolster ones courage either, what 5-ish? You only rated him above X-3, who has similar problems. Kargath may be hard, but that's a good thing - it's what (not even as hard as) you'd expect from any creative writing teacher's dissemination of your submission. If you think Kargath's hard try being rejected by an actual editor, or by someone with a doctorate in the language Inferno is reacting immaturely and we're trying to explain to him that this isn't a ****ing roast, there's a purpose to it =P We could give him huggly hugs of fairy dust but it wouldn't do jack to help improve him.

[Inferno Dragon]

I fealt there was reason to doubt kargath's judgement on this one.

and if you're going to attack anyone attack me, I deserve it for calling out kargath on a BS judgement.
but leave SD out of this, she had nothing to do with it!

and to repster, I'm not being emo. I'm pissed off and I'm calling kargath on his BS.

[Mushi]

Yay. I won.

To adress a few points:

I know I goofed up in my last post, I hit a major brain fart(don't we all?), and right when it was getting better(I was going to reveal more than a laser...), BOOM. OVER.

I need to be more punctual. Good game, X-3.

[Wyborn]

Take it to the chat thread, duders, that's what it's there for. Every time someone posts in here I think the last judgement is up.

[LOOT]

Didn't even get to show what I was going to do with the cane of somaria, or the medallions. Sometimes tournaments suck.

Indeed. I wanted to pull some of Senel's Climax mode for this battle.

In any case, whenever you have time to write some nice battles, I would like to see a challenge thread so we can work out some ass kicking.

AS FOR YOU JUDGES. HOW DARE YOU JUDGE ME. Love them comments.

[Saria Dragon of the Rain Wilds]

Thank you, Erdawn. I have been rejected by an editor (many, in fact- oh, the life of an author), as well as critiqued by a successful creative writing teacher.

Funny thing, though? Not a single professional has ever been such an ass as to tell me I "lost" because I didn't write to their standards. You're all so excited, when I just think Kargath took that last little step between "constructive" and outright criticism. There's the difference.

I won't be expecting you to see it though. You're in love with what Kargath did. You don't need to tell me that again, but thanks.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Sarai Sez:

[QUOTE=Galefore]4. The judges word is final. I want to see good sportsmanship from the loser, and likewise from winner. I will be honest and tell you that if I lose my battle, I will not complain. Simply put, it is un-sportsmanlike and very dishonorable.
[/QUOTE]



Now shut up and take your freaking problems directly to their sources or to the moderators of the gods-damned tournament.

Fsking melodramats.

[Galefore]

So, we're still waiting on the verdict to return from Karg?

Awesome.

Also, thanks for the advice, SD.

Rep, you rule.

As for this whole argument, it happens ever damned year. It's nothing new. So I can roll with it.

[Kargath]

I won't comment on the comments until I'm finished, but I just want to say that today is a public holiday here in Oz. Judging will therefore progress significantly faster today.

[Galefore]

Well, from my standpoint, after reading all of this...

Nobody is right. You all lose.

Perhaps I should rephrase that.

This argument was dead when it first happened. Inferno is bound to disagree with everything. Sure, Karg was pretty hard. But hard works. Maybe not on Inferno, but it works. And besides, this argument would never have happened if Inferno had obeyed my own damn rules.

I mean, seriously. I have srs beefs with this because 1) Inferno shouldn't have said a damn thing. It's against my rules, and that pisses me the **** off. Galefore considers this a ****ing no-no. 2) Nobody should have even responded to him. And if you did, you should have kept it in the Chat thread. He can learn common sense on his own time, not right now. Or at least, not in this thread. :P 3) SD, I find that calling us 'elitist' because we find Inferno's desire, no, his drive to make everything he is in a drama (No offense, Infy. In just seems to happen to you.) just a notch unnecessary, but eh, I suppose you were just stating your standpoint. And I respect that.

Now, this argument is over. Karg's word? Final. Brutal, yes. Unnecessarily so? Perhaps. But there was, in this fellow's opinion, enough constructive in the criticism. I believe he told Inferno a few things, albeit coated in cynicism, which could have helped if he had listened. Did he? Hell no. But he's Inferno. We'll just let him not agree and move on with our Tournament.

If you desire any further discussion about this matter, you have two options. Private Messaging, or the ****ing Chat Topic, which was made for chat. Or you could talk about it on some IM service, or at home, or with your uninterested and likely hungry pets.

So yeah. Have a good 'n.

[Saria Dragon of the Rain Wilds]

...Gale, dude. Come have a coffee with me or something. We'll just chill. It'll be sweet.

[Galefore]

That sounds like ****loads of fun. I could roll with that, it sounds fun to death.

[Kargath]

Lycrios vs Galefore
I don't remember having ever seen Lycrios before this tourney started. Hi there!
Narrative - General (3.5 Points)
Lycrios: 1.8
Galefore: 2.1
OK work from the both of you. The relationship between the lizard man and his weapon needed explaining more, and a reason for Kyen's presence in the city would be useful. In addition, it seemed like you nearly forgot that your character was just about in the mouth of the blob-thing at the start of one post.
Galefore, your creature's backstory needed a bit more explaining too. The dimensional hole was underexplained and underused. It would have worked far better as a 'reveal'. You could have made Kyen attempt to stab Gingal through the throat with the staff, and have a suprise reveal of the dimension hole eat the weapon. I laughed when you made Gingal stupid. Nice. Reminds me a bit of a certain section of Douglas Adam's work. Your final post was what pushed you across the line here.

Writing - Technique (4 Points)
Lycrios: 2.4
Galefore: 2.1
Minor spelling and grammar mistakes were present throughout both your posts. I also noticed words being dropped in sentences. For the most part, I could follow what was going on, though the changing surroundings were not clearly defined in either of your texts. In addition, there was one sequence where neither of you specified which arm of Kyen's was damaged. Kyen had four (six? whichever way you split it), it would be really appreciated if you could always clarify where damage is taking place.
Lycrios, your initial post seemed full of adjectives almost for the sake of putting them in the prose. Several of the sentences were simply oversaturated. In addition, I immediately imagined a jello lizard when you failed to specify in what way your creature's body was twisting.
You need to pay attention to sentence flow as well. In several cases I could see that if you spent a few more minutes on rearranging certain sentences your prose would have become a fair bit better.
Overall, your prose was not stellar, but it was not exceptionally bad either. It was rough, but servicable.
Galefore - emo much with your intro? Your prose tended to be tinged with purple, but you dropped out of that as time went on.
You have a problem with run-on sentences, which Lycrios suffered to a much lesser extent. I personally have this problem when writing sentences for the first time. I can often recognise it as it is happening. After finishing a paragraph, I do a quick read-through and check sentence flow, refactoring where necessary. Following the same technique would be useful to you.
In addition, I was still slightly unsure of your creature's exact look. Where does this neck attach? How big is the head? How round is the body?
Don't use OOC sections to deliver important information about the story either.

Narrative - Originality (0.5 Point)
Lycrios: 0.3
Galefore: 0.35
There was nothing really that new about the fighting itself or the battlefield, so I'll turn to the character design.
Both creature's morphology had quite inventive points, but Galefore edges out Lycrios with a more adventurous and original design.

Narrative - Gradient And Scaling (1 Point)
Lycrios: 1
Galefore: 1
Well-paced and scaled from the both of you. No ridiculous killykillstuff.

Misc - Fuzz Point (1 Point)
Lycrios: 0
Galefore: 0
I found nothing that fell outside the categories above.

General comments:
I could see the posts improving slightly as time went on. Even though I found the technical writing issues distracting, I probably would have enjoyed seeing where this ended up.

Final Score:
Lycrios: 5.5
Galefore: 5.59


Judging by this criteria is rather time-consuming (mostly due to the large amount of explanatory writing for each category). I'm making a best effort to finish by tomorrow evening, but I can't make any full guarantees.

[Galefore]

Ah, all around good advice. This happens to be a battle I consider a massive failure, if not just on my part. Although I'm a little confused on the emo comment, I'm pretty certain this was a nice beating. :P

[Joker]

Thank you, Erdawn. I have been rejected by an editor (many, in fact- oh, the life of an author), as well as critiqued by a successful creative writing teacher.

Funny thing, though? Not a single professional has ever been such an ass as to tell me I "lost" because I didn't write to their standards. You're all so excited, when I just think Kargath took that last little step between "constructive" and outright criticism. There's the difference.

I won't be expecting you to see it though. You're in love with what Kargath did. You don't need to tell me that again, but thanks.

SD

I’m sorry but I think your score was perfectly expressed for some one of your personality. Your sweet, thoughtful and very accurate when it comes to your assessment of other peoples writing. You make valid points and give the writer a type of criticism that doesn’t sound like their being put down for trying to apply pen to paper.

With that being said, you should learn quickly that most of us here don’t expect to put pampers on and be babied when others critique our writing. My style of critiquing some one elses work can be very abusive, insulting and demeaning to that other writer. But my assessment, and my opinion on the matter is no less valid than the next person. I’m glad that in life you have had wonderful teachers, and various authors critique your writing with the same aptitude for kindness that you posses. However in the real world there will always be people who not only tell it like it is but actually shove it down your throat. Whether you agree with how someone assess your writing or not you can’t go through life expecting everyone to treat you with the same graciousness and positive attitude that others do. Inferno and Tazy need to learn this. We might not be calling YOU stupid or idiotic but we can sure say that about what you write. Constructive criticism is not to tell some one nicely what they need to improve on, it is to simply tell them. How nice you make it isn’t the point of constrictive criticism. The point is to help that writer get better. You might help them by telling them nicely and giving advice or you can help them by smacking them up the head every time they do something wrong. In that way you might not be offering much advice as far as improving, but you are (albeit very rudely) showing them where the problem lies. It is left to the writer to ponder on how to improve on those areas themself. As a writer you have to be willing to accept both options especially when giving your work up for criticism.

Inferno shouldn’t cry or feel offended if some one thinks his character design is stupid. He should nod and keep doing what he’s doing. He should choose what he wants to take from that assessment if anything and make himself a better writer. Inferno has to understand that with so many people in the world, there are bound to be individuals who are not going to like his work. Now if a judge had insulted YOU ( not your writing style or character) then that my friend is not criticism...dems fighten words!!

I read the Inferno fight between him and Tazy and thought it sucked just as much as the rest of you. Now as a silent shadow I have read many of Inferno’s fights and I know with out a doubt he could have done a hundred times better. Style and character be damned!! He can use a Goku character with the best of them, and believe me there are many writers that can make it work. Inferno has a knack for keeping pace and showing that his character can get the job done. Like everyone here he still has his faults. And in this particular instance...there were more mistakes than usual.

In regards to Tazy, I have to be honest. I have not seen much of your work, so I’m not sure if both of you were simply feeding off each others writing or if you actually have some level of skill that didn’t get used this fight.

[Heroine of the Dragon]

You're right, Joker... that's how the real world works... and we allow it to be by accepting it. I find it shameful that we applaud rudeness in this world.

Kargath crossed so many lines by saying "they both lose". Regardless of how honest it was or wasn't, there was a MUCH BETTER WAY of expressing his dismay at having to judge what he obviously didn't enjoy.

*huggly hugs of fairy dust hugs Erdawn* You might find that hugs do do something... given the right circumstances. You just gotta look for the right time to give them...

[Inferno Dragon]

SD

I’m sorry but I think your score was perfectly expressed for some one of your personality. Your sweet, thoughtful and very accurate when it comes to your assessment of other peoples writing. You make valid points and give the writer a type of criticism that doesn’t sound like their being put down for trying to put pen to paper.

With that being said, you should learn quickly that most of us here don’t expect to put pampers on and be babied when others critique our writing. My style of critiquing some one elses work can be very abusive, insulting and demeaning to that other writer. But my assessment, and my opinion on the matter is no less valid than the next person. I’m glad that in life you have had wonderful teachers, and various authors critique your writing with the same aptitude for kindness that you posses. However in the real world there will always be people who not only tell it like it is but actually shove it down your throat. Whether you agree with how someone assess your writing or not you can’t go through life expecting everyone to treat you with the same graciousness and positive attitude that others do. Inferno and Tazy need to learn this. We might not be calling YOU stupid or idiotic but we can sure say that about what you write. Constructive criticism is not to tell some one nicely what they need to improve on, it is to simply tell them. How nice you make it isn’t the point of constrictive criticism. The point is to help that writer get better. You might help them by telling them nicely and giving advice or you can help them by smacking them up the head every time they do something wrong. In that way you might not be offering much advice as far as improving, but you are (albeit very rudely) showing them where the problem lies. It is left to the writer to ponder on how to improve on those areas themself. As a writer you have to be willing to accept both options especially when giving your work up for criticism.

Inferno shouldn’t cry or feel offended if some one thinks his character design is stupid. He should nod and keep doing what he’s doing. He should choose what he wants to take from that assessment if anything and make himself a better writer. Inferno has to understand that with so many people in the world, there are bound to be individuals who are not going to like his work. Now if a judge had insulted YOU ( not your writing style or character) then that my friend is not criticism...dems fighten words!!

I read the Inferno fight between him and Tazy and thought it sucked just as much as the rest of you. Now as a silent shadow I have read many of Inferno’s fights and I know with out a doubt he could have done a hundred times better. Style and character be damned!! He can use a Goku character with the best of them, and believe me there are many writers that can make it work. Inferno has a knack for keeping pace and showing that his character can get the job done. Like everyone here he still has his faults. And in this particular instance...there were more mistakes than usual.

In regards to Tazy, I have to be honest. I have not seen much of your work, so I’m not sure if both of you were simply feeding off each others writing or if you actually have some level of skill that didn’t get used this fight.

now that is what I call a critique/judgement. also for the record I wasn't "crying" about anything it was a pissed of complaint. I'll admit, reading over it again I could have done alot better. but it's over now, I'm out, let's move on. tazy got the higher score (I already added it up) and I'm working with SD through PMs to improove myself, call it training if you will. next time I'll be in top form, and who knows, maybe I'll be the champ.

but until then I have to train to become stronger! and hopefully Joker, you and I can battle soon so that I can test my skill level.

[Saria Dragon of the Rain Wilds]

I can only imagine either everyone is purposefully misunderstanding the issue I am personally taking with Kargath's judgement, or you're all hopelessly naive and/or not reading what I've said at all.

The "real world" is full of many people who consider themselves knowledgable on things they simply aren't, absolutely without question. For the sake of this argument, I went on Erdawn's comments about professionals, people who are within the writing and publishing industry. A professional editor tells you where to improve without being a prick at the tail-end of their assessment. Like it or not, that's reality, guys. People who unnecessarily insult writers they are meant to be editing for lose their jobs. A professional will be blunt when telling you, "this needs to be cut/changed/improved/completely rewritten". I haven't encountered an editor who's so inept that they need to resort to personal jabs at the author to get their point across. People who do it for ****s and giggles (like judging an internet playfight) often resort to insults because they feel that best portrays their opinion, but again, isn't that just an indication of the "real world". Love it or hate it.

Kargath is correct in his assessments of where Tazy and Inferno can both improve their writing style, to better suit a marketable audience. But so we're absolutely clear in all ways, this is where Kargath fell down:

"You both lose. It's just that one of you happened to lose a little less."

Everything else Kargath did was FINE AND DANDY. I haven't taken issue with it, I haven't said Kargath was wrong, or he was being cruel. The points he made were all legit, right until he told two writers they lose. I have spoken with Inferno, to help clarify what all three judges have said, and also give very specific guidance on how to improve individual points.

I hope that whole "unoriginality" deal is uniform throughout the judgements, too. The battlefield is full of copycharacters, including this very tourney. I don't see it as a problem, since everyone and their dog has done it. Repeatedly.