Now, I’m just randomly going to respond to the different reviews I’ve been given. Haha.

[hider=Responses][hider=Villageidiotx][quote=@Vilageidiotx][hider=Quest's of the Glorious Leader]Ahh, I didn't participate in the Glorious Leader forum game part of the contest, so I feel I lost a lot of what is going on here. When I got to the part where you starting naming stuff from the forum game, and name-dropped MDK, I felt like I wasn't reading a submission so much as just another post in the contest thread. Also, were there supposed to be words in those blocks, or were the blocks just blank spaces used to convey the perspective shift? Because I played around with them and never got anything but block. Either way, I think that, all and all, this was too much of an in-joke and it doesn't manage to compete on it's own merits.[/hider][/quote]

My apologies for making you feel lost. Indeed, this was written with the intention of being all fun and games, and not to be a winning entry for this contest. The reason the words were hidden was to show that the visible parts was what the propaganda of the Glorious Leader wanted to tell, and the invisible part was what the Resistance wanted to tell, but they wanted to not be discovered by the followers of the Glorious Leader, so they hid it behind invisible text. Hahaha. Thank you, anyways! XD[/hider]

[hider=Dark Wind][quote=@Dark Wind][hider=Quests of the Glorious Leader]Know this can't be truly considered a poem or anything. More like a quest list, which the title points out! And, well, you lived up to the title. So, that's always good. Anyway, onto more serious things. I think having the hidden text to be highlighted was a pretty cool concept, and ran well with the hiders and code colors for the IC kind of play we had going on in the other thread. However, I don't know how effective it was. Seems like it went over the heads of some people and is one of those things that might be accidentally discovered rather than anything else. Though, I did end up getting it. Was there a better way to make that more effective? Maybe. I don't know how you would have done it, but that's that on that case. 

Overall this was fairly simple and ran with the storyline we built in the other thread using the forum members as the characters. As a piece, we don't know too much about these characters but I can say we don't have to know too much because this feels more like a bit of a humorous piece just establishing the ridiculousness of all of the Glorious Leader loyalty and crazy events of the rebels. I can't give it a vote because there's no elements that make it stand as an excellent piece of work or a superior piece of work within the bunch. To be fair, I believe you were just having fun with it and I had fun going along so mission accomplished I'd say. Fun detour, fun little reminder of how great a time this RPGC has been. Maybe there's an even more creative, more amplified ridiculous route you could have gone. That'd be something. But yeah, you made me smile and I enjoyed myself! [/hider][/quote]

Of course this can’t qualify for a poem, FOR IT AIN’T ONE. XD 

… Indeed, I don’t know how effective the invisible text was, either! Thing is, I didn’t want to just GIVE AWAY that there was text between the lines, either. I wanted it to feel like it was a secret between me and the reader, somehow. That the reader should feel smart finding it, or something. So, yeah, I don’t know either what I should have done. Oh, well. Hahaha. NOW IT BECAME LIKE THIS! XD

Yupp. That’s exactly what I was thinking when I was writing it. And yeah, maybe there is such a route that could have taken, but now this was what I thought of and that’s what I’m going with. Maybe it was a mistake to make things, well, ‘dramatic’ towards the end, but I really wanted to make it escalate somehow. Oh, well. Thanks for the review~[/hider]

[hider=mdk] [quote=@mdk][hider=quests of the glorious leader] [@platinumskink]
Well that was a lot of fun!

So, to really appreciate this, you certainly had to be ‘in’ on the GLORIOUS ‘roleplay’ I guess. But if you weren’t – and you highlighted – I think it would still be worth talking about because of the great effect of the hidden text. The two sides – and then that one part where they trade places? FLAWLESS EXECUTION. I’m not gonna be picky about the writing because, I mean, dueling propagandas, what do you expect right? But there’s one line where you point out ‘This is happening in modern times’ or something along those lines and, yeah, okay, that’s [i]slightly[/i] breaking the fourth wall just a touch. But whatever. 

[i]This was fun.[/i] On format alone this has to be the cleverest thing anybody’s ever turned in. I dig it, I like it, I APPROVE. Nice job. Also I’M A STAAAAAAAR! Woot. I think in the realm of ‘canon’ for GLORIOUS COUNTRY, this should pretty much be the authoritative ‘what happened’ outcome. [/hider][/quote]
 
And this here, is the review I wrote this entry for, that makes it all worth it. XD

Thanks. Just… just thanks. Yeah, that line was weird, but it was because I wanted the ‘Glorious’ side to try to maintain that they were in a medieval setting because that allowed more heroics when the ‘Resistance’ side was realistic and said as it was and that the events were taking place in a modern age. I’m not sure if that was a good choice, but, eh! What’s done is done! Haha! Alright, that’s about it. Not sure about this being canon, if it is I probably should have gone into more detail about what actually happened, but… thanks for thinking so~ Haha~![/hider]


[hider=Shorticus][quote=@Shorticus][hider=Quests of the Glorious Leader]Okay: first, I'd like to say that I think I see what you're going for. This is a caricature of how silly the praising for the Glorious Leader gets. It's showing blind loyalty and making up wild tales about how he's putting an end to the Resistance, etc. But... Your piece doesn't do so incredibly well.

My first impression as I was reading this was a sort of propaganda-like children's book with each sentence being by itself on a page with a picture to accompany it. None of the lines really go together well, but they stand just fine on their own, and I could imagine flipping this children's book page by page as I went. That's actually an effect I can admire a little.

But it feels like you did two major things wrong:

[list][*]First, you ran with the gag for what felt like was too long. Yeah, it's ridiculous the way he's portrayed. It's humorous. However, it slowly began to feel like the horse had been beaten dead a while back.
[*]The Resistance intermission felt... clunky. I don't know how else to describe it. It felt clunky and like it could've been done better, or maybe would have been better without it. I'll talk more about this at the end.
[*]The Highlight thing wasn't incredibly effective, and I'll talk about that at the end as well.[/list]

Now onto minor issues:

Firstly, you need to watch how you write after you use quotation marks. Here is an example of what you wrote,

<Snipped quote>

What it should have read was this,

<Snipped quote>

Keep that in mind in the future. You don't capitalize after a quotation mark unless you're starting a new sentence. For instance, if you'd said, "Then the Glorious Leader launched his epic attack" instead of "The Glorious Leader replied, launching his epic attack," you'd have been fine. But you're writing one sentence, not two; one train of thought, not two.

Now, let's talk about the Highlight issue. Here's why I found it ineffectual:

I didn't find it.

There you have it. I missed the whole darned point of your story until after I went back to quote a piece to explain quotation marks. If it hadn't been for Copy Pasta, I would [i]never[/i] have found the invisible bits, and to me, that means they're ineffectual.

I do think it's clever what you did. I think you had the right idea. However, cleverness only works when you use it in such a way that your audience will get the joke. If your audience can't find [i]half of your work,[/i] you may want to reconsider your approach.

You would have had a much better piece if you'd just written this in place of the Resistance's intermission:

<Snipped quote>

Or something of that nature.

I like this piece, but it's not my favorite selection, nor is it my favorite poem. You had a very clever idea, but the way you carried it out just wasn't effective, and your joke (while initially funny) became less funny as time went on. It would've been way more funny in my first read if I had more than HIGHLIGHT written at the end. Actually, it'd be way more effective if the cue to read the hidden stuff came way earlier in general.

I feel kind of rude for lambasting you like I have. The reason why I'm doing this, though? If you'd presented this just a little differently, this probably would've been my favorite poem, or even my favorite piece overall. But if someone can easily miss the highlight of your work, then your work has a problem.

If you want the average person to be able to read your piece and get the joke, you need to make it just a little more clear than you did.[/hider][/quote]

Alright, and now you. Intentionally last, because it feels like you put more effort into the review than I did in the entry… XD … Say, if you want to put a ton of energy into reviewing something, can’t you review [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/3110004]Apocalypse Maiden[/url], an relatively recent piece that I actually take pride in as an author, instead of this joke of mine? XD … Oh, holy crap, that was already four months ago… Hah… Actually, don’t, as proud as I am of the story, I’m reminded there were numerous grammatical issues in it, haha…

Alright, firstly, that’s not poetry. It isn’t even rhyming. I just wrote like that to allow text in-between the lines more fluently. If I wrote paragraph-wise, there’d be sudden holes in the text, which would make it too obvious that I’m hiding something. Haha. … And yes, if you haven’t found the hidden text, I suppose the Resistance interruption thing might not be so effective, haha.

About writing with small letters after quotation marks… I do it intentionally. I find it ridiculous that by some reason I should not start the new sentence outside the quotation marks with a small letter as if it’s its own sentence where the quotation is a word in it. It looks wrong to my eyes. So, yes, I’m aware of it, I intentionally do it “wrong”. My apologies. But, nobody has pointed it out before now. Haha.

About the highlight thing… I didn’t want to give it away. I wanted the viewer to feel that something was odd about these sentences, that it felt like something was missing, and perhaps get the idea that maybe something was hidden and check it out. I was aware the way I sent it in may have been flawed, but… Somehow, it felt like stating in the beginning that the reader should highlight would take away the experience. Yet, I clearly took away from the experience when you didn’t find it. I’ve no idea what I should have done. Oh, well. I did have a thought a while ago after I had already sent my entry in that I could have started the entry with “This is a broadcast of the Glorious Leader. What is presented here is the absolute truth, do not attempt to [b]read between the lines[/b]. All hail the Glorious Leader”, but that also would have been like giving it away, somewhat. Oh, well. OH, WELL!

Thanks for liking it. With the theme being what it was, I felt like doing a little ploy like this. I intend to be more serious in the future. That is, assuming the contest is presented in a serious manner. Haha. Thanks for the review~![/hider][/hider]