Allright. For starters, let me tell you straight away that not knowing your characters’ histories was a BITCH in this one. Seriously :D Even though some of you tried to make some explanation with various degree of success, it was an unforeseen mistake in the base idea of the contest and for that i profusely apologize. also, what you are about to read might look like I am hating on you lot, but I am just trying to be honest, please don’t take it personally :D

I feel like letting you know what factors I took to deciding the winners. First of all, a story should impress me. I believe you would agree that if a piece of text can make your heartbeat go faster, it can be forgiven quite a few other mistakes. I also took note of how the setting and actions fit together from realism standpoint. I tried to take your specific character personalities etc. into account as best as I could, but sometimes even then some bits here and there jsut left me with a ‘yeah right’ feeling. Lastly, grammar, typography and language. I normally forgive a lot in IC posts without ranting in the OOC, but that’s because I understand some of you aren’t native speakers, on top of that they come home tired form work, you may be falling ill with some sickness or it was just shitty day and you don’t have your drive, that I get. But here, you’ve had days to write and in my opinion not that much pressure on you, so you should take some time to better your writing through this.

Without further ado, off to the entries.

[@MULTI_MEDIA_MAN]: Your story imo quite suffered on the realism part. If the band of criminals were such idiots, it felt a bit hard to believe they could set up a working ambush. The escape also looked fairly easy, enough so that it left me wondering why didn’t he escape days ago. Lastly, he seemed a bit too self confident, cheeky and calm when faced with people that killed ‘some of his people’. On a final note, he seems a bit too Ok with committing what amounts to murder and he gets off rather easy. If nothing else, killing the leader of the criminal ring who could have spilled the names of all the others would probably leave a few people from the police really unhappy to just let him off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

[@SirBeowulf]: Much like Triple M, I found this entry lacking in the realism department. I understand it is in his personality to be mouthing off to captors and stuff. However, since you chose his captor to be the White Fang for much like the same reasons a Schnee would be held, I can not see how he would be held with such pathetic measures considering the prize he is. The White fang is an organized force, no pushovers. It doesn’t seem like they would make that kind of a mistake. also irking me was how he ‘torn his body apart’, and yet managed to overpower an unharmed opponent, despite being messed up enough that his semblance wasn’t enough to stop it. the way you wrote it it made it look like his body would be too damage to deliver the attack properly even if he wasn’t in great physical discomfort. Lastly, I was left with desiring a bit more closure to this. It’s implied the police is getting on the place and he is in no other imminent danger save for his health, however it would have been nice to see soemthing like reuniting with the team.

[@NarayanK]: This one was one of the examples where lacking the character’s history was a bit in the way, however, you managed to do it right somehow. I am usually heavily opposed to using many effects like fancy fonts and colors, but as all things, the key is in the balance, and you done it right again. Reading that red, large lettered bit of laughter was the thing that affected me the most out of all the entries. I am only sad that I have like zero idea to what’s going on, best I could come up with is that Sangue is a loon and she constructed some monster in her head tht tortures her in her sleep.

[@Lucius Cypher]: OK first of all, how long has it been confirmed that it’s faunUs, not faunAs? I mean really, time to pick up on that after two volumes xD I’m not going to sugar coat it, your entry took a heavy blow in the language etc. department. First of all, this is exactly how i hate to see the colors used. consider the following passages:
[quote]”Come to mourn?”[/quote]
[quote] But I’m still going to enjoy this.” The woman looked to the boy as he stepped forward.[/quote]
In the first one, the color doesn’t really tell me anything about who said it, whereas in the second, it is described enough for the color to be unnecessary. You do not see colors in the books do you? My philosophy is that if you need to use formatting to make the reader understand what you wrote, you should go back and rewrite it. Similarly with the linked images. If you absolutely have to include them instead of a written description (and yes, books do have illustrations, i know), embed them into the text. This feels like if the book told me to flip to page 100 after the current one to see an image relevant to what i am reading now. Your quite possibly biggest sin are the mismatched tenses. You tell most of the story in past tense, but you write bits of it in present. I had this habit too and it took me a year to get rid of it, but it’s quite a flaw. Finally, you spent quite a lot of time describing the scene etc., but again I can’t really make heads or tails of who most of the people in the story are. I am not ashamed to admit that my deduction and detective talents are zero or below, but even those readers will read your story and they will not be impressed. Some explanations in the end would have been nice.

[@Lugubrious]: I find it hard to write anything about your entry, which is both good and bad. Good because there was nothing really wrong with it to deserve a comment, however, bad because frankly it felt kind of bland. I can not say it managed to captivate me like some of the other entries did. Props to you though for including the team coming to the rescue though, finally somebody thought of that instead of soloing their way out or using what felt like a deus ex machina.

[@Guess Who]: Great story, yes. However, it’s not really what I had in mind for the contest. I wanted to read about your character’s feelings and reactions, and I got more of the rest of the team, while only getting few bits and glimpses of the main character that wasn’t really in the story. I wanted to read about the psychology of him, and recorded messages just don’t cut it in that regard.

So, after all of that, first place goes to NayaranK along with the two credits. The second was a lot harder pick, and I awarded it to Lugubrious. Honorable mention to Guess Who, however as I said, the story was good, except it didn’t ‘fit the bill’.

Howgh.