Shienvien

Site Server Issues - 22nd Jan

I'd recommend engaging a couple volunteers who, even if they do not modify any code, can at least read logs and reboot the server if it goes completely belly-up.

Persistent Worlds.

Hmm. Not entirely certain picking a fandom for the site's "official" RP - or at least a RP that is more prominent than any other - is a good idea.

RPGC #15: New Beginnings - Voting and Critique

@BrokenPromise: Whatever your opinion of the narrative character, it's the correct one - for me, he was mostly just a neutral storytelling tool. I usually intend to make people think and form their own opinions rather than feel emotions for emotion's own sake (if there is someone I'd figure you should specifically feel sorry for, it's the mother, not the narrative character).
As for finding a microchip outside of someone's body, though - depends on where. If you drop forty meters into a sufficiently powerful whitewater river, there wouldn't be too much left of you. (There are a fair amount of rivers in real life which have a reputation of eating people, and nothing much being found, let alone entire bodies; I may or may not have been envisioning a specific bridge I myself have stood on.) The chip would probably end up lodged somewhere between rocks a couple dozen kilometers downflow.

@SleepingSilence: If there is one thing I'd single out, it's the sentence structure, rather than punctuation (although there is some overlap) or the perhaps too heavy reliance on symbolism and "flowery language". I could probably go over the entire piece from a proofreader's standpoint if you'd like - maybe over the weekend.

RPGC #15: New Beginnings - Voting and Critique

Here, some comments, as promised. Some may come across as harsh, but remember that it's just my personal opinions and things I noticed. I'm mostly judging things as me, and as me, I'm biased and have stylistic and literary preferences. (As well as formatting preferences - especially when I have a slight case of the head hurt, it can get exceedingly hard to follow short snippets of text with a lot of empty lines between them, which is why I myself tend to go with book-style paragraph breaks over net-style paragraph breaks, and only double line break for chapters and scene changes.) I mostly judged the entries by how well they kept my interest and how comprehensible and pleasant to read they were, as well as what I generally felt or noticed (I will notice missing or odd punctuation and be distracted by it, for instance).
Did not read anyone's critique before coming out with my own (comments on my own critique added last).

A Tale From the Life of Axel Blacksoul

. Well, what's there to say about it? It's quite obviously a joke entry. It's written with the kind of language that will make a writer want to cringe. The sort that makes you think about the teenagers who claim to be psychopaths on the internet (who, in turn, will have actual psychopaths comment that being screamed at is both annoying and boring - with them neurotypicals being all the same -, and whether you'd leave them alone with their pizza now, thank-you-very-much). Surprisingly, it's actually quite freely readable, not quite long enough to entirely outstay its welcome, and as a parody/joke, it works. So well done on that front.

The Elder's Due

. A couple of grammatical mistakes here and there (mostly missing commas), nothing too drastic. Fairly heavy use of poetic language, and a few peculiar expressions (how much plausibility is the right amount?). The formatting was a bit hard to follow for me in the first part. The second part read more fluidly, keeping to the more poetic style, but I'd say it fits here rather than not. Not quite exaggerated enough to become overbearing. Reminds me a bit of some particular author, but quite hard to say which specifically. So the kid grew up, got his due, and his last piece went forth to gain some renown from that, eh? Might need a little bit of refining, but quite good.

The Bridge (as the author)

. Some of the formatting seems to have fled in the copy-paste?
Written over the course of an hour because why not. Keeping mostly to my usual recent style, though a bit more blatant than the default, owing to the brevity of the format. Unrefined, too - it's mostly the concept that matters here, rather than the technical accuracy (which I can otherwise spend more time on than the writing itself). Over the word-guideline, but then again, I not uncommonly write roleplaying posts of around the same length (and usually write books, not miniature short stories - a short story is usually defined as being between 1'500 and 30'000 words, for reference). A bit heavier piece with multiple intended messages. If it makes someone think, then good (addendum: further comments in the first bit of my reply to SleepingSilence, in case the piece was left a bit ambiguous regardless).

@PlatinumSkink Hey, thanks.

@SleepingSilence Yeah... Some of the formatting seems to have gone MIA in the copy-paste. (You might notice the actual entry looks a bit different.)
The added details had everything to do with what is going on; it's the world which shapes our actions, after all, and some flavor is, I feel, needed, too. You're correct - he faked his death. It feels as though you might have missed a lot of the intended undertone, though - he had been planning for this new beginning for a while (real suicide was never considered). Possibly years. He already knew a place to get new documents the day something happened. He created false leads over weeks. He used tracking devices for his benefit. The bridge was the ideal location. The crash was no accident. (And here I thought I might have made things a bit too blatant. :-P )
Yet, he also had plans for continuing as he always had (mentions of buying a new car) because routine is comfortable and he and his mother mutually cared about one another. The loss of his job was thus but the trigger. He knew his boring life would have crashed down soon after, so change was needed, now, before the funds run out, yet he knew he would be seriously hurting the one person who cared about him, not to mention breaking the law and gouging a hole in his arm. How far will he go to give himself a new chance, a new beginning? How can he make it up for his mother? Is he a bad man for going through?

Yes and no with your comments - I do have a habit of sticking in extraneous adjectives here and there. And superfluous droning. (I've deliberately moved for more action-oriented narrative in recent years, less elaborately technical, less philosophical, less heavy on internal monologue.) It has also received somewhat smaller amount of scrutiny than my official writings (though more than my roleplaying posts, at least; those I sometimes write half-asleep and never proofread). In turn, I feel that some of the suggested edits would detract from the intended mood of the story and make it a bit too clinical.
1. correction - I'd leave as is. This is deliberate emphasis. (Also, I don't know whether you're a driver, but dark and low visibility don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. A couple of weeks ago I was driving in dark, in snowfall, and there was still a good amount of visibility, whereas on another road with "only" rain, there was practically nil.)
2. correction - agreed. Unnecessary adjective (sorry) right there.
3. correction - so and so. Could be further emphasis, could be redundancy. Not sure whether I'd leave or take it.
4. correction - deliberately there; this entire bit is purposefully casual rather than dry description.
5. correction - hyper-emphasis. (Lack of "his own" life or himself-second narrative until now.)
6. correction - eeh, your variants come across as too dry for my liking. Doesn't carry the correct mood or amount of thought. (And yes, it's necessary; he's carefully planned the entire thing down to such little details, remember?)
7. correction - yeah ... formatting is in part gone, as noted. That one sentence you bring out actually is its own paragraph (but not its own block), though. It has it's own meaning and purpose. It's supposed to stand out.

All in all, thanks for the more elaborate feedback. Do not mistake my analysis of your analysis for being annoyed or bitter (I just have a pesky habit of analyzing everything, and wanted to share what I myself had in mind writing it). It can be surprisingly hard to get honest opinions from people unaffiliated (and thus not biased towards) me, and receiving some varied feedback is a great motivator in entering those kinds of competitions. Some little discussion between writers can go a long way in improving oneself.

Etching Ellis's Stone

. Some odd punctuation or lack of such here and there ("regular’s" doesn't need an apostrophe in the fourth paragraph, "glow, through" doesn't need a comma, etc), as well as a few oddly constructed sentences (there is an extra "where" in the first paragraph; "The surface level smile you put on daily, embellishing bleakness that eventually withers without support and dies," reads as if it were the bleakness that dies, rather than the smile [comma missing?], etc).
Much like Elder's Due, it's fairly heavy on the poetic language; feels a bit overdone here, more so than in the former. Something feels a bit exaggerated, cumbersome or otherwise unnatural; the text doesn't really seem to flow too well, and a couple of things I had to read multiple times to make sure I got them right. Most of it could be probably be fixed by correcting the punctuation and rearranging the sentences a bit. You might also be omitting conjunctions a bit too frequently - dropping them is fine occasionally, but do it too much and your sentences can end up being disjointed. In a couple of places, the grammar and context disagreed on who was doing what. ("Waiting in silence, looking up at Ellis, eventually smiling at the boy," - Ellis is not the boy, so I presume Ellis smiled, not the teen who was looking up at him; "at Ellis, who eventually smiled at him," might work better.) So ... yeah. Sentence structure and grammar might need some working on.

Hmm... Compare:
a) "Underneath the pale moonlight partially shrouded by clouds, the stink coming from his muffler was nearly suffocating, pulling into the driveway and checked the displaying time on the radio, softly playing some classic rock."
b) "The stink coming from his muffler was nearly suffocating as he pulled into the driveway underneath pale partially-shrouded moonlight, and checked the time display on the radio softly playing some classic rock."
The second flows slightly better, but is by no means ideal. Still cumbersome and slightly ambiguous (I'd probably split the sentences a bit differently there), but at least it gets rid of oddities like "pulling into the driveway and checked".

The sentence structure (are you perhaps non-native speaker who hasn't used English for too extensively?) and some choice of expressions left aside, I quite liked the first, contemplative half of the piece. The thoughts are solid. Maybe a tiny bit too much pathos and poetic language. The action-bit with the boy felt a bit ...rushed? ...artificial? It felt as though it should have had a bit more impact and momentum, yet the emotions flip like light switches.
Wonky sentence structure and maybe a bit too heavy on the symbolism, perhaps a bit crammed ending, but good thoughts behind the piece would be my overall verdict.

Miriam

. A lot of odd punctuation here, and lack of such the same. The sentence structure reads mostly OK; I don't have any difficulty following it even with the occasional misplaced article or pronoun, or the aforementioned punctuation issues.
A nihilistic deity who knows all he creates is just things he came up with, and has, for the most part, lost interest, but will, for his companion - who, presumably, is one of the few things "real" to him -, still create one more thing? Intriguing concept. Not all that common. The execution, I feel, falls short (...by being too long; pun not intended, I discovered that by proof-reading my own text myself).
This one, I feel, contrary to some other entries, could actually have benefited from being much shorter. It repeats the same general thoughts too many times. Far too many times. Cut it down to about half length, fix the punctuation, and it could be a neat little half-page concept-piece.

The Desert Prince

. Fairly strong, but somewhat cliché beginning. (I have a bit of a problem with the formatting, but that's more on me.) The writing itself is quite good, reads naturally. Engaging enough, too. A couple of grammar mistakes I spotted ("and an attempt on the life Queen Aggiana" probably needs an "of", for instance), not much. Punctuation is all there (nothing much that caught my eye on that front). The first part is interesting enough. Why indeed?
A bit too convenient of the protagonist to end up in that exact bar, though, and then not even recognize the guy he was looking for. The attack feels a little bit flat. So does the plot twist. Some combination of too convenient and rushed. The prince believed a bit too easily. Acted a bit too unnaturally. What about the person he had called his sister? Why not work from inside? Would he really just be okay with it, just like that? No demanding of proof? How is his father a tyrant? Too many whats, too little impact.
The opposite of some other entries - good skill with words, but the idea tapers off towards the end, or the latter half of content is perhaps rushed and came out as a bit of an info-dump.

1/2/2177

. A bit hard to follow with the all-dialogue approach and the, uh, very spacious formatting. Skill with words is quite decent. A daughter of a terrorist and a father-killer whose squad-mates are trying to convince her to make peace with her family. Hmm. A bit different. A bit of a stretch of the prompt. Even when I was going back and forth checking who was who, it was quite interesting seeing the story unravel. I keep thinking it should exist as audio-piece, rather than text. A sound-based format would permit distinguishing speakers by voice [could also have colored the text - one of the few occasions I'd find it appropriate], as well as playing with tone. I have surprisingly little to say here, actually...

Potatoes

. A few punctuation issues and at least two grammatical mishaps ("They're too busy," dammit). Not too many eye-sores there, thus. Good overall skill with words. Reads mostly naturally; a tiny bit of clunkiness here and there. A bit satirical, a bit disturbing ... it's strange, but I think I quite like it.

It'll Get Easier Over Time

. Some minor issues with wonky sentence structure, punctuation and grammar in general. A few sentences towards the beginning would have been better off split in two. For the most part, reads naturally enough. Nothing particularly novel, but well-written little superhero-style story.

The Trade

. The formatting here really, really doesn't work for me ... it's almost all single lines split up with double line-breaks. I find that exceedingly hard to follow. Copy-pasted to text editor and replaced the double line breaks. That made the lines easier to follow, but I'm not sure the text turned much more comprehensible. The grammar and punctuation are OK, at least.
I think I wrote something a bit like that as an experiment, once, and that character was an amalgamation of a few thousand dead people all tangled up and given ever-shifting form based on whoever "won" at the time. As a result, said character was not exactly what we define as sane. I also wondered how people managed to put up with reading what nonsense said entity wrote.
That said ... the entry still reads as a bit of a mess. Is it insanity? Might also have been written by a mildly confused deep neural network. Guy was possessed by something, lunacy ensued, they got him back, but not fully, the mad guy eviscerates himself? Or maybe it's still madness, and just one of his many intermittent attempts to end it. Or maybe he's dead, and it's all hell. Doesn't feel like much of a new beginning. Doesn't read naturally.
I don't think it works for me, regrettably.

RPGC #15: New Beginnings - Voting and Critique

Hmm, I'd probably go with "The Bridge" myself, if I were to name my little one-shot short story rather than presenting it without a title as originally posted - whether it stands for the actual physical location where most of the action happens or a more metaphorical crossing point from one life to another is up for anyone's own interpretation.
I'll also point out that non-writer-sanctioned titles might not necessarily be neutral, as they can come across as too spoilery or otherwise affect the interpretation of of the pieces (so with untitled entries, it might be preferable to fall back to enumeration or author IDs).

I'll probably read through the other entries properly and give some comments/critique when it's not 6:30 in the morning on a work day, and I'm more awake.

The ability to give multiple votes/nominations in the future (say, 1 point for third place, 2 for second, 3 for first, our outright asking people to order all of the entries) might be interesting. It would give more feedback, especially with a few voters.

The Prophecy

^ Legion created a Discord server for the players/people interested in the RP, provided without a further comment.

The Prophecy

We have Itanale (Aemoten's horse, a dark brown bay, 5'5" at withers), Immanuel's donkey and the paladin's big white one with the roadside group.

"Very recently" was two hours ago now. Don't things like that usually hurt a lot for a comparatively short time only? (I wouldn't know, seeing how I'm female and it is rather difficult to hit anything unusually painful down there, and thus I don't have a comparison point. Granted, as we talked on time, Jaelnec's ability to tolerate pain might also be below that of an average person...) It's not like Angora had metal-capped boots and the opportunity to put her entire body behind the kick or anything (so if anything, it was notably less bad than it could have been).

Legion would be sorely disappointed if two don't end up sharing a horse.

The Prophecy

Ouch. It has been a long time since I had one of those myself... The last time I think I was ... nine? I was actually put in the hospital just because neither of my parents could stay home at the time (hurray for free medical aid, though). The most memorable part of it, however, was how utterly boring hospital was. In the end, I even took off with all of the newspapers from the desk a couple of corridors away (which I'm still not fully clear on whether were meant for keeping in my room rather than being read on the couches next to them, but hey, they also anchored me to a drip for most of the day, and it was kind of annoying getting through the doors with that). Mind you "all" included not only the regular newspapers, but also the business/economy papers (the kind my grandfather read, printed on a specific kind of salmon-colored paper back in the day). Suffice to say, it wasn't until a bit over a decade later (when I had been working for a few years, and had begun to have spare money) that I took that keen an interest in the stock market again. Imagine that, a nine-year-old who was mostly interested in beasts of all kind voluntarily read about the stock market. Boredom is a powerful force indeed...

The Prophecy

To be perfectly honest, the best approximation of most of Jordan's current thoughts [as of the end of the post] is whatever is the closest equivalent of "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck" is in Rodoria...

EDIT: For the reference, I imagined Sir Yanin to be approaching from the same direction Jordan's head is pointed.

The Prophecy

Jordan Forthey

The stranger checked the street behind him - so he was afraid of being discovered, at the very least. He could perhaps use it to his advantage, to momentarily distract his foe? Maybe. But he'd rather there really was someone just about right now, and distractions would matter little if he were to be sliced to ribbons before any aid arrived. Were there any people in these buildings, at home and awake, who could hear him? Damned.
The stranger had his attention on him again. This time, he did not reply, and just rushed him again. He, at least, was done talking.
Yet again, Jordan did the only thing he could - attempted to evade by continuing in the direction his last shift in weight distribution directed him to, which was to the right. It was not quite as graceful as his last dodge, however. On a snap, it had felt like the mysterious figure could use his staff to hit him whichever way he sidestepped - the reach of the studded polearm was too great, and he was not trying to use it as a sort of lance now - and, well, as a response Jordan thus dove away from where he had been standing.
As a result of his dive, the stranger did not quite hit what he intended on either account - Jordan could feel the side of his left calf hit the stranger's arm, and the quarterstaff contact his sword - sharply, but as he did not brace against the other's weapon, it more swept his own blade aside than impacted his wrist.
The cobbled street, as he quickly found out, was a lot less kind. His right shoulder took the worst of the hit as it smacked against the smooth stones below, followed by his hip that had his dagger's sheathe with the smaller blade dig into it, and he could feel the side of his head contact with the pavement, too. Luckily not hard; his shoulder had taken that hit for his head. His hands stayed to desperately clutch the grip of his sword, knuckles white. He did not feel much pain for the time being; too much caught up in the rush of blood.
Away, was his most sensible thought as he distinguished the legs of the stranger past his feet through slightly blurred vision.
"STOP!!!" he barked, but yet also opted to have his sword do an almost half-circle as he did the first thing he instinctively got into his head and chopped at the other's legs. Not the most powerful hit - there was no way to put his body behind the hack here - but at least the edge was aligned correctly, and the blade had gathered a fair amount of momentum during its arc. There were only two options, really - either the stranger got further away, or he was cut. (Luckily for him, the very bottom end of the street was in shadow from the opposite building, so neither sun nor the reflections could hurt him here.)
Vaguely, some detached part of the squire recalled something about different grip types. Something about round grips being not preferable when it mattered which side of your weapon hit something. Suppose it was good his sword had an oval grip, then. Another part noted he probably had not outright snapped his arm off his shoulder or something, as it still moved.

Sir Yanin Glade

Trouble. The boy had found trouble, the knight noted to himself as his ears caught a familiar voice, and he exited the cross street - right after the "trouble" had glanced over his shoulder to check behind his back. From what he had gathered over the past five years, Jordan was not the sort who specifically went out of his way to make trouble for trouble's own sake. It was logical to assume, then, that his opponent was the instigator.
The boy could be inquisitive and persistent, that much was true, but normal people hardly went for a full-blown assault just over that. The Falcon had noted that Jordan was perhaps also more daring than most people. Personally, Sir Yanin quite liked that his squire was quite straightforward with his questions; some others would indefinitely dance around what they actually were going after, and you try to figure out what in the planes they wanted of you. More often than not, he did not even bother. If they wanted to get something, they could say it, too.
Just eighty yards separating him and the two combatants at that point. Sir Yanin did not quite run. He strode forward, fast. For a man his side, he could be very quiet in motion, if he so desired. Quiet for any human, in fact. Quiet, but for the time being, not necessarily hiding his presence.
A bit further away, he could see Jordan dive to the side and land hard on his side as the trouble rushed him. Just don't snap your spine or crack your head open, the knight mentally noted at his apprentice. Or have your heart torn out like those poor sods in Nemhim. Most other things were fixable. If you were going to get gravely injured, it was doubtlessly preferable to do so in a large city with its own resident high priests of Reina.
Well-coordinated. Very fast. Very strong for his size. But reckless, untrained and straightforward. Uses a quarterstaff. Possible smaller blades. Jordan shouted, and attempted to hack at the trouble's legs or feet. Sir Yanin Glade drew his own sword, its blade half the length of the thus far unidentified individual's polearm, its hilt another foot.
Sixty-four yards to go.